New Google search set to shape start-ups’ SEO strategies

Start-up business may be able to gain a SEO advantage over their larger rivals by taking advantage of Google’s new Instant Search service from day one.

Google has announced that the new enhancement, that shows search results as you type, has come out of beta and will be available to all users. Users won’t have to finish typing a full search term or even click on ‘search’, with Google estimating this will save two to five second of time per search.

SEO experts say that companies with existing search engine strategies may suffer a drop in traffic, as well as impacting upon advertisers’ Google Quality Score within paid search.

This could change firms’ SEO approach because while businesses might have relied on ranking first for just one search query, the multiple pages of search results mean businesses have to rank highly for any number of phrases.

However, start-ups that haven’t launched a website yet may be able to adapt slightly more quickly to the changes.

Adam Bunn, head of search at search and social marketing agency Greenlight, says that the constituent parts of longer keywords are often the types of generic keywords that are dominated by big brands. However, these brands also have the cash to maintain their rankings.

“So for smaller websites, this could well be a case of first Google giveth (the “May Day update”) then it taketh away (streaming search results),” he says.