Instant Search, GoDaddy is More Popular than God — With Google

Google changes could be notable. And I really mean it this time.

There have been plenty of times where pundits have stated changes at Google would turn the web on its head. They (and I) have been wrong.

But this time may be different.

When you start thinking regarding the implications of Instant Search your head starts to spin. Just think regarding it from the advertising perspective. Efficient Frontier did, and my head is spinning. Think regarding how many untargeted impressions your ad might start showing up for!

I played around with Instant Search tonight and by now found some startling things. Type “god”, and your instant search results won’t be for religion. They’ll be for GoDaddy — unless you hit the enter key following typing “god”.

Start searching for “Domain Name Wi” and results will show up for “Domain Name Wiki” with “Reglike” as the second suggestion. Hopefully people continue typing all the way. Of course, you get an entirely different set of results when you hit enter following “wi”.

Also think regarding singular vs. plural. Suddenly, ranking higher for the singular version of a word might be better if people stop typing ahead of they type the ‘s’.

This change could radically affect search traffic. Pay attention to your analytics over the next few days — it could be a wild ride!