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This page is to address the impact of changes Google has made to its search function and how it displays results. It will also look at what Digital Clarity are doing with your account and links to other resources & information about Google Instant. Further information will be released over the next few days.

If you would like to discuss Google Instant and your account further please contact your account manager.

What Does This Mean For Me?

Pay Per Click

Will my PPC account be affected?

There may be some changes to the way impressions are counted and quality score is monitored. However, Google themselves have not released how this will affect quality scores and this is the case for every advertiser on Google.

Digital Clarity will be monitoring impressions, clicks, cost, CPC, CTR and conversion data on a daily basis with these recent changes to ensure that any impact is measured and managed to continue driving effective results within your budgets.

Will this affect PPC keywords?

Potentially, if individuals are delivered results following a single letter or word being typed in then the generic keywords within an account may become much more valuable. The user process will be to start generic (or with one word) and refine this as they type and get feedback from the listings they are delivered. However at the same time people still know what they are looking for and they will not change that based on results delivered. This should mean that the specific long tail keywords still have great importance and will more than likely increase the variation of keywords you should be advertising on.

Digital Clarity will be running search query reports and keyword reports to monitor how users are searching and what terms they are using as well as if these keywords reflect a change in trends. We will also ensure that keywords which are becoming more popular are included within your account where relevant.

Will PPC Impressions be counted the same?

According to Google impressions are measured in three ways with Google Instant:

1. Your site is displayed in search results as a response to a user’s completed query (e.g. by pressing “enter” or selecting a term from auto complete). This is the traditional model.
   
2. The user begins to type a term on Google and clicks on a link on the page, such as a search result, ad, or a related search.
3. The user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of 3 seconds.

It is therefore likely that impressions may increase and the keywords which are responsible for the increase may vary to those which currently achieve high impression volumes.

Digital Clarity will be monitoring any peaks and troughs across individual keywords and search queries to ensure these trends are being managed from the onset.

Search Engine Optimisation

How will this affect SEO?

While it's too early to accurately predict the implications of this, it's likely that the important of a top 3 position will increase as users can scan through different sets of results faster and with less effort. Long-Tail keywords are likely to become more important, an area Digital Clarity routinely monitor (please see below).

What is the impact to the Long-Tail Keywords?

The potential downside is it’s possible you’ll see the long-tail get much smaller if you're not already an established and well indexed website. For websites that rely heavily on the long-tail for conversions this may have a direct impact on your bottom line. It should however be noted that this also raises the opportunity of drawing in more traffic from long-tail keywords that previously received little to no search volume.

Digital Clarity will be closely monitoring the overall organic traffic being received and the number of long-tail keywords supplying that traffic. Should a significant decline be noted a strategy will be developed to stabilise and improve the volume of traffic being received. Where new opportunities arise for attracting long-tail traffic this will be incorporated into any on-going SEO strategy.

How will this affect my Ranking?

Google will not change the way they rank sites - your current rankings should not be affected by Google Instant, however we believe it will be increasingly important to be in the top 3-5 results – anything beyond this is going to be below the ‘fold’ of the standard monitor and the search behaviour of the average user is expected to change over time, reducing the likelihood of scrolling down the page.

Digital Clarity will, as always, monitor all keywords currently being tracked throughout the campaigns and should any significant decrease be noted the usual strategies will be put in place to counter this.

What are Digital Clarity doing with my account?

With all the recent changes and questions about Google Instant one thing remains consistent; Digital Clarity will continue to manage, monitor, report on and react to any changes we see in user trends and search results.

Your accounts will be checked on a daily basis as always and the reporting and updates which we provide should give you the feedback and insight you need to be confident in the results and service which we are providing.