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Will Google Instant Affect Keyword Domains?

With the new release of Google Instant Search one has to ask the question, will it affect keyword domains? There is little doubt that Google has a fetish for speed, but is Google Instant too fast for it’s own good? How relevant are it’s results and can the world’s largest information database really predict to any level of accuracy what we are really searching for?

Keyword domains are the back bone of many an online marketing strategy. Some will argue that building a brand is bigger than owning a keyword domain, but with massive UK companies like B&Q (DIY.com), First Choice (holidays.co.uk) and the Times Online (news.co.uk) to name a tiny few, having invested in keyword domains to boost their brand and considering “more than one in six searches are performed by internet users directly typing a domain into their browser, something which accounts for more than 10% of Google’s search revenues.” SOURCE: Marketing Week … it is hard to believe that keyword domains will be affected.

Google has confirmed its search results have not changed as part of the roll-out and that you can get to “weather” by just typing in “w” saving on average between 2 and 5 seconds per search… great… Or is it?

In my recent presentation about keyword domains at Think Visibility last Saturday I used the example of “hand bags” to explain what a keyword domain is. I will now demonstrate how long it takes Google Instant to “predict” my search for hand bags.

So let’s spell it out letter by letter (H-A-N-D B-A-G-S) and see what Google Instant predicts for me:

“H”

Next is “Ha”

and “Han”

and now “Hand”

… and finally the last 4 letters in one, because I can’t be bothered to put every picture up (Google doesn’t give a hand bag related result until the whole word is typed in)

“Hand Bags” - And as we can see the top result is not a brand, its a keyword domain. Unfortunately their must be a few creases to iron out as Google Instant doesn’t recognise the search term properly (see red boxes) and gives you the two options for it instead. But it proves the point that no matter how “intelligent” or “predictive” the search engine behemoth may be it will be a long time be for it can truly be intuitive. It only throws up the most highly searched terms for a particular letter, presumably from the most relevant queries in its database for anything even remotely niche, long tail (or just more than one word) I have to say that it really isn’t a life changing feature…

In my opinion keyword domains will remain safe for a long time to come and will still be crucial for helping companies achieve targeted traffic via search or direct navigation. Until Google or any other search engine invents “search by the power of thought,” the intrinsic value held in generic / keyword domains will also remain for a long time to come.

The good thing is you CAN turn it off.

Would love to hear your comments

Best

Gary

Tags: google instant, keyword domains, search