What are the SEO Implications of Google Suggest?
The technology behind Google Suggest is nothing new. It’s been available on the Google Toolbar for some time, as well as through Firefox, YouTube, and the iPhone. Rivals like Yahoo! and Live Search have also had it on their homepage for quite awhile now. But finally, Google has added it to their homepage.
Reviews are mixed. Some say the technology is not as advanced as Yahoo’s, others say Live Search is better, and still others think Firefox’s plugins are better. None of this matters much when it comes to marketing. The fact is that now Google has its suggest feature, it becomes extremely important to explore the possible implications for search engine optimization.
Let’s start with a keyword like “dirt bikes.” Typing that in prompts Google Suggest to spit out a few 3 to 4 word phrases that a user will see and may choose to click on. Immediately, the first thought becomes that it may be helpful to optimize for the suggested phrases Google gives you. For “dirt bikes,” the top three are “dirt bikes for sale,” “dirt bikes games,” and “dirt bikes for kids.” Google uses an algorithm to determine the most popular searches that result from the words you put in.
This works two ways: it both lengthens and condenses relevant keyword phrases. A simple single word entry may prompt Google Suggest to send out a 2-4 word phrase that a user make click on. And when users may normally type in a 4-6 long-tail phrase, they may quit early and go with the shorter phrase suggested by Google, making medium-tail optimization a bigger priority.
Also, Google Suggest tends to put out a lot of very location-specific keyword phrases. A search of “restaurants” or “wedding planners” puts out a list that adds cities to the keywords. If somebody in New York types in a keyword and then Google Suggests adds an “in nyc” or “in new york” to the back end of it, they would be very likely to click on that rather than the shorter, less location specific keyword. Optimizing for location would then become a bigger priority.
Google Suggest also corrects spelling errors, probably making it less important to optimize for misspelled words.
It’s obvious that for short, regular keywords, it’s going to be important to see what Google Suggest puts out there after they are typed in and consider optimizing for those. If it’s important to rank for “pottery supplies” and you see that “pottery supplies clay” is one of the Google suggestions, there’s a good chance that anybody searching specifically for clay will click on the suggestion, and it would be wise to optimize for that.
We’re certainly going to be looking at Google Suggest much more closely to see how it affects the SEO landscape, and will update you with what we find. The degree to which searchers utilize it still needs to be determined. A lot of people don’t like it very much, but many others will look to it as a means of guiding them to where they want to go. Thus optimizing for it becomes a necessity.
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