Search results appear in real-time with Google Instant, the user no longer needs to click the ‘Search’ button or press enter. Results are personalised based on search histories (if you’re signed in to a Google account).

Search results appear and are revised as search terms are entered letter by letter.

Some quick thoughts from me on what this means:

1. Google Instant will improve search literacy – users will become adept at creating long strings of keywords.
2. The top Google ranking positions become even more crucial for website owners. The aim for website owners has always been to rank on the first page of the Google search results.  Top ten was acceptable pre-Google Instant.  I reckon its all about the top five results now, as this is all most users will see as they modify their search terms.
3. Companies with generic terms in their brand names may suffer as a result of Google Instant as they stand more chance of losing users along the way. The generic keyword (i.e. relating to your industry or category) will expose the user to a whole raft of competitors.
4. Organisations need to review and improve their Search Listing (the copy that appears under each Search Results) as this may be the bait that catches the searchers eye resulting in the click you want.
5. For advertisers, hmm…. I am not sure what this means but I don’t think its very good. It may be good for Google because it will generate more impressions but I think it means a reduced dwell time for ads overall, which I would assume is likely to drive down CTRs.
6. Google Instant will deliver a better mobile experience, where users are typically hunting for something very specific and are less inclined to scroll – click – scroll – click.  It will work better with speech input.  This is important because mobile apps are circumventing search in some respects.  There is a need to improve the mobile experience.

Google Instant is coming to all Google properties in time.  The company is claiming that Instant will save time.

Lots of discussion this week about Google Caffeine and the impact that it will have on search results. There is a useful post by Matt Cutts, a Google software engineer.

Back links are one part of the search equation. Keywords are another.

Here are a few tools for assessing keyword density and usage. They can help you analyse your competitors (i.e. the people that rank higher than you) and inform your own keyword strategy. Thanks to @jimboot for some of these tips – Jim puts out a series of very useful search videos, which can be found on YouTube.

Here goes:

• To understand what the most often used keywords within a specific website use TagCrowd. This can help you identify the words that are ranking for a competitive site.
• For a different angle on keyword density use Keyword Counter.  You can run an analysis of an entire website.
• For identifying related keywords use the Google Wonder wheel, which can be found in the left hand options column on any Google search results page. The Wonder wheel link can be found under ‘Standard View’. It creates a clickable spider diagram of keywords related to your original search term.
• To check comparative results in the hottest search engines go to Bing vs. Google. Pre-Caffeine results.
• The Google sandbox for running test searches against the new Caffeine code.

There are a plethora of tools for analysing and optimising keywords, we use Keyword Discovery and have trialled Market Samurai.