Google Instant Search – Serving Your ADHD Demographic
Author Mike Rough
I was recently introduced to Google’s new “Instant Search” at 1:00 am MTN time on Wednesday while typing a query into Google’s search box. All of a sudden the screen started to flicker as I typed CompTIA. “C” the screen showed craigslist, “o” flicker again and it changed to Costco, “m” Comcast, “p” Compaq, and on as the browser tried to show me all the possible choices at once. “What in the name of Sergey Brin is going on!?”
The first thing that crossed my mind was “Great! Another crazy browser hijack attempt!” and immediately initiated a registry and file scan. A few minor things came up but nothing that would warrant the possessed behavior of my normally docile machine.
I went back to my research thinking that whatever problem had caused this schizophrenic behavior had been corrected.
It was then that I noticed grey letters ahead of my search in the box.??? Knowing that it was getting late I rubbed my eyes, blinked a few times, yep the grey letters were still there. At this point I went to Google.com avoiding the search box like the plague afraid that I would end up with a migraine or seizure for my efforts.
After reading up on Google Instant Search I have come to the following conclusions about Google.
1. They think the average user suffers from ADHD
2. Google must have switched out their florescent office lights with LED strobes.
It frightens me to think what would happen to someone with a tendency toward seizures if they typed “Supercalafragilisticexpialadocious” in the hopes of finding song lyrics. I can only imagine the 9-1-1 call from a concerned loved one:
Dispatch: 9-1-1 please state your emergency
Caller: Oh my gosh my (insert relation) is having a seizure in front of his computer.
Dispatch: Was he using Google?
Caller: -hesitation- Yes… How did you know?
Dispatch: This is the 5th call in the last hour mam.
Caller: What should I do? He was just trying to sing along with our daughter -sob-.
Dispatch: Make sure his air passage ways are clear and switch off “Instant Search”.
In all fairness it is probably just a case of getting used to this type of search, which I have to admit after using it a bit is not so bad.
The long term ramifications to website owners hoping to obtain and maintain rank in Google are, in my opinion, about to get a rude awakening.
Google’s philosophy is to give the user the best experience possible. With this goal in mind any search suggestions put before the user, even during instant search will be monitored for performance.
What does it mean?
Any site that may initially find themselves ranked #1 – 3 may find themselves dropped out of favor if they are not able to capture the users attention and click through in that flicker of a second it takes the user to refine their search and hit the next screen. Never has latent semantic content theming been more important than now.
In order to gain and maintain top search rank in Google a site will need to have well researched tightly themed pages with extremely attractive eye grabbing titles and descriptions in order to gain a users click.
It will only take a short amount of time for Google to determine if a site that is ranked is being clicked on for a general search phrase and decide to retain it or drop it. Understanding the primary search phrase tree for your users and their primary socioeconomic demographic profile will be crucial in order to retain your current user base if your site relies in new visitors. If you have great content that follows the your user’s preferred search path your chances of coming up under multiple page flickers while the search is further defined increases.
I may be wrong about this but improving site content and content theme streams will never hurt your site’s performance, so I consider it at the very least a win/potential win scenario.
Keep Solving for X
Mike Rough
Mike,
LOL, Google has long had the strength/weakness of designing products for themselves. A good philosophy overall, but maybe the average searcher is not quite as ADHD as the average Google employee. In any case, I really like your point about eye-grabbing titles and descriptions (at least to the extent that Google uses the description). I can imagine that as I get comfortable with instant search I will watch results flicker by with partial attention, waiting for one to grab me.
In other news, I did a search today and only got 4 first page results from Google!?!?! Have you seen that? The search was “best margaritas denver” (I was doing SEO research, not looking for a margarita, really, I was) and I got 4 results displayed out of “About 776,000 results (0.23 seconds).” Not sure if that’s a fluke or a change, but if the latter it sure sucks for any one in position 5 or higher. Position 4 or higher, really, since one of the results was a collapsed Westword listing.
Nico:
I just did a search for and it came up with a full page+ but only results for 88,100… I think it’s a serious case of personalized search meets instant meets multiple data center updates. In all actuality there is no such thing as a vanilla search anymore, so any particular results we may achieve while viewing results from our own computer is totally biased to make us happy… Thank you Google for increasing my dopamine levels even if it is a lie… Whenever I get a “Too Good To Be True” rank I send out a flash to friends and family of different demographics to get a list of rank if there are any for whatever gender, age, education, financial strata, I can to understand if it is a “Solid” ranking. Then again your performance metrics which make or break rank depend on how well you satisfy a users needs. So even if we don’t achieve rank across all demographics we should at least perform well in the one we, according to Google, are the best match. Trying to reverse engineer SEO rank today is like trying to catch wind with a bent paper clip, while buried in a hole in a duffel bag. The key in my mind is knowing who your market is and focusing on that demographic.