Google Instant Search launches and is Yahoo on the rebound?

Over the past three months, Google has lost almost a full percentage point in market share of searches done across the internet (66.2% in June to 65.4% in August). And, Google lost that market share almost entirely to Yahoo. While three months of data in the scheme of things isn’t huge, it is interesting and proves that no search engine within the big 3 (Google, Yahoo! and Bing) can be ignored by businesses in their search engine marketing efforts. Some believe Google’s launch of Instant Search is timely, an effort to stop losses in market share.

Whether the launch was timed or not, Google’s launch of Instant Search is certainly an effort to continue to use the large amounts of data that they collect to “predict” a user’s behavior. Now, using AJAX technologies, Google will begin trying to find your results once the first few characters are entered into the search bar. While Google states that these changes will not affect search or paid results, it will undoubtedly change user’s behavior in how they search. For instance, instead of simply typing in a keyword, some users will most likely begin sorting through the 5 keywords that are presented to them to find the most relevant search, altering their traditional behavior of just typing in a keyword. While keyword research is critical to any SEO campaign, data provided by Google over the next few months will be important to all businesses with a search engine marketing strategy to see how these changes affect the number of searches done for the keywords they are currently targeting.

For more information on these topics, here are a handful of resources:

August 2010 ComScore Data
Google’s explanation of Instant Search
Google Analytics Blog on Instant Search
Google Instant Search: The Impact for eCommerce Site Owners

For more information on this or if you need assistance in your search engine marketing strategy, contact Red Clay Interactive.