E-dreamz Company Blog

You have probably heard of Google Instant by now. It launched and started to change our favorite search engine a little over 21 days ago on September 8th. That day rumors and speulation ran wild. SEO IS DEAD. GOOGLE READS OUR MINDS, ADWORDS WILL SHOW 1,000,0000 IMPRESSIONS AND MY CTR IS GONE, etc. Did this happen? Here are our thoughts so far:

• SEO is not dead! After reviewing all of my accounts and speaking with the rest of the Internt Marketing team we have seen little to no effect. From the smallest to the largest client I cannot correlate any gain or drop related to Google Instant. I do think overtime we will be able to see a drop in the long tail keyword world. 

•  Keyword Research just got even easier. Google Suggest has always been my little secret weapon in keyword research espcially when I was unfamalier with the field of a client. It was the beginning phase of every research on any strategy engeagement or new account I took over. Now it's like I have Google Suggest on steroids. It's not 'suggested' to the searcher it is shoved in their face. I would say its safe to assume you average searcher just takes what Google gives them and clicks. 

• Google does not read your mind. They simply are socially crowd sourcing from all of us. In a way they are using us to make themselves a stronger search engine, but I love that. I find myself using Google Instant more then my Chrome search box. 

• We found out the 'dirty' words. Google instant has a nice little filter in place that will not allow certain words to be suggested. Luckly here we had no clients affected, but I could imagine this could really hurt a business or someone with a last name that started with a word in the 'dirty' list. Intriqued? Check the list here: Google Blacklist

• Adword Impressions have not exploded - From my perspective I have seen little or no correlation with impression increases and Google Instant. Though majority of my clients have a speific niche and do not have very generic keywords. I can imagine if you bid on something like 'hotels' it would have a pretty serious uptick in impressions. Luckly this is a even playing field and everyone is effected evenly. Your CTR might be lower, but you must assume your competitions is too. Now the chanllenge is 'how can i explain this to the client?'

Bonus: Do you HATE Google Instant? Don't worry as you can get rid of it. Lifehacker made a nice video of the how to - How To Turn Off Google Instant Search.

By the end of the day every Google user will see a light purple background behind the paid search results instead of the previous light yellow. The first purple backgrounds became visible to a select group back in May. It took a few months but today marks the end of light yellow and the beginning of light purple for all paid search results for the foreseeable future.

Why the sudden change after three successful years of yellow? Google’s official response is that light purple was chosen purely for aesthetics to update the look and feel of their current search results page. Google is known to be private at best so the color rumor mill has been working overtime since the Monday statement.

Eight years ago the first AdWords advertisements appeared with a light green background. Green seemed an obvious choice considering it is most associated with money. Green has also been proven to improve reading ability and is the color of nature, tranquility and health. The Google brand and lifestyle has always been that of social responsibility, employee wellness and moderation, so green seemed to be a perfect fit.

Five years later the paid search background changed to a light yellow. Yellow seemed to be based on economics for Google’s highest revenue generating product. Yellow is the most visible color in our spectrum and widely used by advertisers and sign makers to grab the attention of passing drivers and potential customers.

By the end of the day the third sponsored search color change will have been fully implemented. Like the first two colors; purple has economic implications as it represents wealth, power and royalty. Seems like a good strategy, get searches in the mindset of wealth and status while they browse ads targeted at returning an investment. Unlike the previous colors, purple has deeper meanings than greenbacks or canaries.

Purple is the primary color of the NBA Champion team, the LA Lakers. Google might not be as nerdy as we thought, using their search results to represent their native California team. They might be avid literature fans referencing the classic novel, The Color Purple, by Alice Walker.

Politically, a completely bi-partisan state is called a Purple State, equal combinations of Red (Republican) and Blue (Democrat) create the perfectly bi-partisan purple. Is Google expressing their frustrations of a split bi-partisan government? Or are they saying political cooperation is the answer to our countries’ issues.

Another theory is that absolutely no thought goes into color choice at all and they are just cycling their logo colors of blue, red, yellow and green. The only thing we know for certain is that the color choice is here to stay. So, regardless of deeper implications we better get used to the change since that is what we’ll see in search results for the next few years.

One of the most powerful features of Twitter is the real-time experience. The growing popularity of Twitter and the demand for real-time results have made Bing and Google take notice. Both search engines now integrate real-time tweets in their results.

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