Marketing Defined

Around the end of August Google Suggest made its appearance as a feature on Google’s home page.

Most would have noticed the Google Suggest feature when typing in a search query.  It’s available on the  Google home page, or alternatively via the search box in your browser’s Google toolbar.

For example, today when I start typing in the word “online”, the following related keyphrases were suggested by Google in a drop-down list.

• online savings account
• online games
• online dictionary
• online movies
• online radio
• online calculator
• online bible
• online tv
• online translation
• online guitar tuner

In a nutshell when a search query is typed into the Google homepage or Google tool bar,  Google Suggest provides users with relevant search terms [semantic keyphrases] based on what they have started to type into the search box.

Naturally, the marketing team at Google states that the purpose of Google Suggest is to provide a better experience for their users.  While this may be true, SEO and IM experts speculate this is an attempt to increase their AdWords revenue by driving users towards the money terms [more popular keywords that require a higher bid from PPC marketers].

What will Google Suggest mean to professional SEOs and internet marketers.   It may seem like a minor change, but Google Suggest may have some serious implications on the search industry. Here’s why:

1. Misspellings are Going to Be Less Important: In the past, healthy traffic was available by optimizing pages for common misspellings.  However, Google has slowed the opportunity to pick up traffic from misspellings via the “Did you mean ” suggestion tab which instantly offers the searcher to pick the correct version  - AND -  the drop down list above shows they are putting another nail in this strategy’s coffin.  It just might be worthwhile diversifying one’s strategies to gain ppc traffic.
2. SEOs May Need to Switch Their Focus to New SERPs: Although one and two word keywords will still be extremely important for SEOs to rank highly for, Google Suggest may be bringing new sets of keywords and SERPs onto SEOs radars.  For example, a celebrity website currently ranks on the first page of results for that celebrity’s name.  However, when you begin to type that celebrity’s name into the Google homepage, the first term that shows up in Google Suggest is the .com domain related to the celebrity (celebrity’s name.com)  IMPORTANT NOTE: It will now be prudent to optimize firstly for the celebrity site to rank for this term (celebrity’s name.com)  - AND - then for a few of the other related terms now appearing in Google Suggest.
3. As Search Skills Improve, So Will Our Information: As searchers become more accustomed to searching with the types of terms that Google Suggest provides them, their searching style will become more focused and less sporadic.  It is possible the long tail may become less significant, but excitingly this will allow SEOs and IM’s to look at more focused analytics data, providing better insight into the actual thought process that goes through searchers’ minds when they are looking for something online.

The ability to provide content based exactly on what a webmaster’s search audience is looking for is the ultimate aim of all SEMs, thus making Google Suggest a welcome addition especially to the amateur SEM on a limited budget.