7 ms·

Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results

68 points by keltex 16y ago

TallGuyShort 16y ago
Interesting observation. It's very subtle, but potentially important. As for myself, I don't think there's a big difference. I use Google Instant just to help me form my queries, because my query changes as I see the intermediate results. The paid results and the first organic results help me see if my query really is going to give me the most relevant results, otherwise I try modifying the query a little bit. When I'm done with that phase I click search, which removes the suggestion box, finalizes the results, and then I scroll down and open whatever results appear promising.
henrikschroder 16y ago
There's been quite a lot of UX research on this, and the concept of "the fold" simply doesn't exist for webpages. People scroll and scan, even the least knowledgeable ones.
- jessriedel 16y ago
  Not when they're in the process of typing.
  - statictype 16y ago
    When most people are in the process of typing, let's face it, they're looking at the keyboard and hardly at the screen at all, let alone, scrolling down.
- brlewis 16y ago
  You're exaggerating. Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. The part of what you're saying that's true is that people scroll at all. This is new. See http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html
  - userthis 16y ago
    And yet that page had at least 7 folds. I think the goal of enabling visitors (and expectation of visitors) to utilize strategic navigational features and view key information within the top portion of the page is valid. And yet, convention dictates web site navigation to be concentrated within specific page areas (top, bottom, sides) and most visitors can anticipate certain features and functionality to reside within one of those areas as best (popular) practices are copied and commoditized. Search results are not the same as the loud flashy bleeps and blips on the latest MTV website. There's an expectation that a user will navigate through the page, on to multiple pages if the first page is either full of useless ads and/or SEO pollution or unsuitable expectations. I personally believe 'the fold' of a web page is a bunch of crap. But that's just me
  - photon_off 16y ago
    You're both right. Users aren't reluctant to scroll if they believe there is something they want to see. However, most pages are designed so that all of the relevant stuff is above the fold. Most of the time, you just don't need to scroll down, because the page is set up to have the most relevant things above the fold, and the least relevant things below.
    - brlewis 16y ago
      We're both right, except for the part where he said that the concept of "the fold" simply doesn't exist for web pages.
RBr 16y ago
Google has two goals with Instant... first, they want to improve the user experience by offering inline suggestions - makes sense - I like that part. What they're not advertising is that Google is dealing with the same decreased CTR and advertising revenue that the rest of the Internet is. In an effort to seem as user-centric as possible, they've introduced a user friendly feature with a refinement that increases the CTR on their ads. This isn't a shocking move, it's a sign of the web to come. What's really disappointing is that Google isn't devoting more time to coming up with different ad units and testing more creative ways to encourage users to click. The online ad industry is stagnant - advertisers and publishers are scared to make changes. Google isn't any different.
- brandnewlow 16y ago
  My startup is building better displays ads for the web: http://nowspots.com http://nowspots.com I agree Its weird that the basic deliverable of an ad unit, a click, hasn't changed in 15 years.
- Pewpewarrows 16y ago
  I've always found it funny that advertisers swear by CTR as much as they do. It's almost as if they completely forgot the last few decades of television advertisement. For television, no one gives a damn if a viewer goes out to buy the product right that instant. It's all about repetition and building psychological reinforcements so that once the viewer actually needs something along the lines of what that product offers, they subconsciously lean towards that specific product as opposed to its competitors. Granted, it's a lot easier for someone to just click some text from their computer than to get up in the middle of a show and drive to a store, but the same essential theory still applies. Which is why I don't understand how CTR is valued so highly over impressions.
  - chopsueyar 16y ago
    The 'Old Spice' campaign is an example of what you describe.
  - underdown 16y ago
vaksel 16y ago
a lot of these "improvements" are made for making people pay. i.e. like that local business results
bretpiatt 16y ago
Do we know if the suggested results are based on search frequency or revenue maximization? -- i.e. if I type in "plan my" will it suggest "travel" above "vacation" if the PPC/CTR on the ads for "plan my travel" generate more $s than "plan my vacation"? That seems like a much more clever optimization than stealing screen real estate. The other optimization to this is if they can guide users to a smaller list of common search phrases they can drive up the prices for them -- a fragmented list of search phrases is very bad for Google.
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  Interesting, so... ORDER BY (CPC * CTR); versus ORDER BY (CTR); yeah, i know they're not using SQL
  - ojilles 16y ago
    CPC * CTR = RPM, and that's what AdSense optimizes for. In effect it's brilliant in it's simplicity as it combines both advertisers wishes (CPC) and consumer's wishes (CTR).
njharman 16y ago
>So instead of giving you “better search results”, you’re getting less search results. Are certainly not mutually exclusive. And when searching for a specific thing/site (rather than going for broad exposure on a given topic) less results, preferably 1 (the correct one) is best.
malloreon 16y ago
Instant's goal is to change user search behavior away from potentially long tail queries towards the head. If they can short circuit your potentially 4-6 word specific search that has fewer and lower paying advertisers associated for a shorter, higher interest/CPC search, they stand to make a lot more money and please larger brand advertisers. That they can wrap it up to users as "decreasing search time" and "better search results" is brilliant.
- moultano 16y ago
  I don't understand the cynicism. Do you have any evidence for this whatsoever?
  - patio11 16y ago
    He's absolutely, screamingly right. They're an advertising company. Big bang changes to the website exist to sell more advertising. Everything else they do is window dressing to make people forget that they are an advertising company.
    - moultano 16y ago
      If all Google showed were ads, no one would come to the site. Furthermore, Google is already outrageously profitable. The only real threat is if people start searching somewhere else. Do you really think they would make changes that make that more likely? Google has strong competition in Bing, Yandex, and Baidu. Even if profit were the only relevant motive, short term profitability is not something Google needs to worry about. It also seems that your argument applies to every ad supported site. Are you contending that the nytimes is in the ad business and not the news business? Is the news mere window dressing for their advertisements? If not, then how are they different from Google?
      - chc 16y ago
        That's actually a better characterization of the newspaper industry than you probably mean for it to be. From the editors' perspective, of course it's all about the news (I'm sure this is true for Google's search engineers too). But from the publisher's perspective, the news basically is some very attractive window-dressing.
lukev 16y ago
No more than having a small monitor steals organic search results.
- sprout 16y ago
  No, it does steal more. Whatever your monitor size the instant suggestions should steal enough space to knock out an organic result.
  - swombat 16y ago
    It's a damn shame there isn't anything like, say, a scroll wheel or a scroll bar, to look at the results below the fold. That would really sort things out.
- MikeCapone 16y ago
  I bet small monitors DO have an effect, and small monitors + instant is probably worse. But what that effect is exactly, that's harder to say. It's not quite as simple as the OP seems to think, IMHO.
qeorge 16y ago
User's overwhelmingly click the top result anyway. [1] If you're not in the top 3, you're close to invisible. I'm not sure this is the scandal the author makes it out to be. [1] http://training.seobook.com/google-ranking-value http://training.seobook.com/google-ranking-value
sever 16y ago
once you hit return, the suggestion box disappears, and you are back to normal mode, do people not hit return?
spolsky 16y ago
Well, Stack Overflow gets about 90% of its traffic from organic search results, on the order of millions of daily page views. The traffic Google sends us did not perceptibly change when they switched to Instant. So anecdotally I can tell you that this is just demonstrably not true for one large-volume site.
- spolsky 16y ago
  Now that I think about it, the whole argument is bogus. For every SERP where your result loses traffic by virtue of falling below the fold, there's probably a SERP where your result gains traffic because the competitors fall below the fold. Sorry, this hypothesis is neither logically correct nor is it backed up by any facts. Do some real experiments next time before you start making claims of having discovered scientific truths.
  - keltex 16y ago
    I don't think that SO's users are representative of google's as a whole. For example, there are a lot less advertisements on software development related searches. What I was pointing out is the high-volume, high revenue searches are being impacted. Plus I'm guessing that people who do those searches are much less savvy than your community. They are less likely to scroll, they have smaller screens and they are problem less discerning between paid and organic results.
    - spolsky 16y ago
      Any evidence of that?
      - keltex 16y ago
        Which part? The fact that novice users have a hard time distinguishing between PPC and organic results? Anecdotal with the many novice users I have dealt with. That there is less advertising for software related keywords vs. other types of keywords? Try out Google's adwords traffic estimator: https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox
randfish 16y ago
There are two blog posts with real data from tens of thousands of search queries showing that in reality, the impact of Google Instant has been negligible: - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-instant-fewer-changes-to-seo-than-the-average-algo-update http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-instant-fewer-changes-to-s... - http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/seo/impact-of-google-instant/ http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/seo/impact-of-google-instant... I wish this type of sensationalist supposition without data to back up the assumptions received less attention here at HN. I've always been impressed with the culture of "show me the stats" when it comes to subjects like financing, startups, technology, engineering, etc. Not sure why that dissipates when a marketing topic arises.
- ajkohn 16y ago
  Well, the impact on search query length may be negligible but there are other ways in which Instant may be changing search behavior. I have a small slice of data I hope to post in the very near future.
  - ajkohn 16y ago
    Here's some preliminary data that shows that Google Instant may have changed the distribution of clicks by rank, with more emphasis being put on results above the fold. http://bit.ly/dAzvX3 http://bit.ly/dAzvX3 It's not about the query behavior, but about assessment behavior. As such, your mileage may vary based on your particular rank for terms. Outside of this analysis, the keyword length could remain the same, but a site may receive less traffic if the auto complete algorithm has changed for critical terms. Again, this will vary site by site - and where one loses, another will gain.
klochner 16y ago
What percentage of people actually visit google to search? It's much less "instant" if you add in the time to get to the google page. I user the address bar in chrome and my browser search bar in firefox.
chanux 16y ago
Fast company article about Google instant and ad impressions - http://www.fastcompany.com/1687976/google-instant-impressions-3-seconds-sneeze http://www.fastcompany.com/1687976/google-instant-impression...
jemfinch 16y ago
I can't remember the last time I used a screen whose native resolution was 1024x768.
RyanJones 16y ago
I can say that both on my personal sites, and on my Fortune 100 client websites, I have seen increases in search traffic from Google after instant was lost, not decreases.
VladRussian 16y ago
today is the day of science on HN - this 25% of Organic Free-Range Antibiotic-Free Search Results were definitely topped by masturbating squirrels. I bet squirrels had much more fun in their story than Google in its.
RexRollman 16y ago
I have to say that I am NOT a fan of Google's instant search. I hope that Google will one day offer a URI that has instant turned off by default, such as http://google.com/instantoff http://google.com/instantoff
jbillingsley 16y ago
I'd like to see a poll of users to find out what percent actually uses instant as it is meant to be used. I know I still do searches how I always have, by hitting enter. I imagine most non-technical users are still hitting enter.
archangel_one 16y ago
Regardless of whether they're correct about it lowering traffic or not, I strongly dislike the use of the word "steal" here. To me that signifies a strange sense of entitlement; the search results are not "yours" and you don't have a God-given right to them, so Google cannot steal them from you. You might as well claim that "I'm Feeling Lucky" steals your search results because users never see any mention of your site if you're in second place, or that showing 10 results per page is unfair to those in 11th place. I wonder a little if this reflects a general debasement of the word "steal". Some years ago it clearly referred to taking physical property, but maybe the smear campaigns from the music / movie industry have successfully extended the scope of the word to include things like this.
rmc 16y ago
You're assuming that each place on the first page gets equal amounts of traffic. The 4th result does not get the same amount of traffic as the 1st result, it gets much much less.

68 points by keltex 16y ago

Interesting observation. It's very subtle, but potentially important. As for myself, I don't think there's a big difference. I use Google Instant just to help me form my queries, because my query changes as I see the intermediate results. The paid results and the first organic results help me see if my query really is going to give me the most relevant results, otherwise I try modifying the query a little bit. When I'm done with that phase I click search, which removes the suggestion box, finalizes the results, and then I scroll down and open whatever results appear promising.

henrikschroder 16y ago

There's been quite a lot of UX research on this, and the concept of "the fold" simply doesn't exist for webpages. People scroll and scan, even the least knowledgeable ones.

jessriedel 16y ago
Not when they're in the process of typing.
- statictype 16y ago
  When most people are in the process of typing, let's face it, they're looking at the keyboard and hardly at the screen at all, let alone, scrolling down.
brlewis 16y ago
You're exaggerating. Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. The part of what you're saying that's true is that people scroll at all. This is new. See http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html
- userthis 16y ago
  And yet that page had at least 7 folds. I think the goal of enabling visitors (and expectation of visitors) to utilize strategic navigational features and view key information within the top portion of the page is valid. And yet, convention dictates web site navigation to be concentrated within specific page areas (top, bottom, sides) and most visitors can anticipate certain features and functionality to reside within one of those areas as best (popular) practices are copied and commoditized. Search results are not the same as the loud flashy bleeps and blips on the latest MTV website. There's an expectation that a user will navigate through the page, on to multiple pages if the first page is either full of useless ads and/or SEO pollution or unsuitable expectations. I personally believe 'the fold' of a web page is a bunch of crap. But that's just me
- photon_off 16y ago
  You're both right. Users aren't reluctant to scroll if they believe there is something they want to see. However, most pages are designed so that all of the relevant stuff is above the fold. Most of the time, you just don't need to scroll down, because the page is set up to have the most relevant things above the fold, and the least relevant things below.
  - brlewis 16y ago
    We're both right, except for the part where he said that the concept of "the fold" simply doesn't exist for web pages.

RBr 16y ago

Google has two goals with Instant... first, they want to improve the user experience by offering inline suggestions - makes sense - I like that part. What they're not advertising is that Google is dealing with the same decreased CTR and advertising revenue that the rest of the Internet is. In an effort to seem as user-centric as possible, they've introduced a user friendly feature with a refinement that increases the CTR on their ads. This isn't a shocking move, it's a sign of the web to come. What's really disappointing is that Google isn't devoting more time to coming up with different ad units and testing more creative ways to encourage users to click. The online ad industry is stagnant - advertisers and publishers are scared to make changes. Google isn't any different.

brandnewlow 16y ago
My startup is building better displays ads for the web: http://nowspots.com http://nowspots.com I agree Its weird that the basic deliverable of an ad unit, a click, hasn't changed in 15 years.
Pewpewarrows 16y ago
I've always found it funny that advertisers swear by CTR as much as they do. It's almost as if they completely forgot the last few decades of television advertisement. For television, no one gives a damn if a viewer goes out to buy the product right that instant. It's all about repetition and building psychological reinforcements so that once the viewer actually needs something along the lines of what that product offers, they subconsciously lean towards that specific product as opposed to its competitors. Granted, it's a lot easier for someone to just click some text from their computer than to get up in the middle of a show and drive to a store, but the same essential theory still applies. Which is why I don't understand how CTR is valued so highly over impressions.
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  The 'Old Spice' campaign is an example of what you describe.
- underdown 16y ago

vaksel 16y ago

a lot of these "improvements" are made for making people pay. i.e. like that local business results

bretpiatt 16y ago

Do we know if the suggested results are based on search frequency or revenue maximization? -- i.e. if I type in "plan my" will it suggest "travel" above "vacation" if the PPC/CTR on the ads for "plan my travel" generate more $s than "plan my vacation"? That seems like a much more clever optimization than stealing screen real estate. The other optimization to this is if they can guide users to a smaller list of common search phrases they can drive up the prices for them -- a fragmented list of search phrases is very bad for Google.

chopsueyar 16y ago
Interesting, so... ORDER BY (CPC * CTR); versus ORDER BY (CTR); yeah, i know they're not using SQL
- ojilles 16y ago
  CPC * CTR = RPM, and that's what AdSense optimizes for. In effect it's brilliant in it's simplicity as it combines both advertisers wishes (CPC) and consumer's wishes (CTR).

njharman 16y ago

>So instead of giving you “better search results”, you’re getting less search results. Are certainly not mutually exclusive. And when searching for a specific thing/site (rather than going for broad exposure on a given topic) less results, preferably 1 (the correct one) is best.

malloreon 16y ago

Instant's goal is to change user search behavior away from potentially long tail queries towards the head. If they can short circuit your potentially 4-6 word specific search that has fewer and lower paying advertisers associated for a shorter, higher interest/CPC search, they stand to make a lot more money and please larger brand advertisers. That they can wrap it up to users as "decreasing search time" and "better search results" is brilliant.

moultano 16y ago
I don't understand the cynicism. Do you have any evidence for this whatsoever?
- patio11 16y ago
  He's absolutely, screamingly right. They're an advertising company. Big bang changes to the website exist to sell more advertising. Everything else they do is window dressing to make people forget that they are an advertising company.
  - moultano 16y ago
    If all Google showed were ads, no one would come to the site. Furthermore, Google is already outrageously profitable. The only real threat is if people start searching somewhere else. Do you really think they would make changes that make that more likely? Google has strong competition in Bing, Yandex, and Baidu. Even if profit were the only relevant motive, short term profitability is not something Google needs to worry about. It also seems that your argument applies to every ad supported site. Are you contending that the nytimes is in the ad business and not the news business? Is the news mere window dressing for their advertisements? If not, then how are they different from Google?
    - chc 16y ago
      That's actually a better characterization of the newspaper industry than you probably mean for it to be. From the editors' perspective, of course it's all about the news (I'm sure this is true for Google's search engineers too). But from the publisher's perspective, the news basically is some very attractive window-dressing.

lukev 16y ago

No more than having a small monitor steals organic search results.

sprout 16y ago
No, it does steal more. Whatever your monitor size the instant suggestions should steal enough space to knock out an organic result.
- swombat 16y ago
  It's a damn shame there isn't anything like, say, a scroll wheel or a scroll bar, to look at the results below the fold. That would really sort things out.
MikeCapone 16y ago
I bet small monitors DO have an effect, and small monitors + instant is probably worse. But what that effect is exactly, that's harder to say. It's not quite as simple as the OP seems to think, IMHO.

qeorge 16y ago

User's overwhelmingly click the top result anyway. [1] If you're not in the top 3, you're close to invisible. I'm not sure this is the scandal the author makes it out to be. [1] http://training.seobook.com/google-ranking-value http://training.seobook.com/google-ranking-value

sever 16y ago

once you hit return, the suggestion box disappears, and you are back to normal mode, do people not hit return?

spolsky 16y ago

Well, Stack Overflow gets about 90% of its traffic from organic search results, on the order of millions of daily page views. The traffic Google sends us did not perceptibly change when they switched to Instant. So anecdotally I can tell you that this is just demonstrably not true for one large-volume site.

spolsky 16y ago
Now that I think about it, the whole argument is bogus. For every SERP where your result loses traffic by virtue of falling below the fold, there's probably a SERP where your result gains traffic because the competitors fall below the fold. Sorry, this hypothesis is neither logically correct nor is it backed up by any facts. Do some real experiments next time before you start making claims of having discovered scientific truths.
- keltex 16y ago
  I don't think that SO's users are representative of google's as a whole. For example, there are a lot less advertisements on software development related searches. What I was pointing out is the high-volume, high revenue searches are being impacted. Plus I'm guessing that people who do those searches are much less savvy than your community. They are less likely to scroll, they have smaller screens and they are problem less discerning between paid and organic results.
  - spolsky 16y ago
    Any evidence of that?
    - keltex 16y ago
      Which part? The fact that novice users have a hard time distinguishing between PPC and organic results? Anecdotal with the many novice users I have dealt with. That there is less advertising for software related keywords vs. other types of keywords? Try out Google's adwords traffic estimator: https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

randfish 16y ago

There are two blog posts with real data from tens of thousands of search queries showing that in reality, the impact of Google Instant has been negligible: - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-instant-fewer-changes-to-seo-than-the-average-algo-update http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-instant-fewer-changes-to-s... - http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/seo/impact-of-google-instant/ http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/seo/impact-of-google-instant... I wish this type of sensationalist supposition without data to back up the assumptions received less attention here at HN. I've always been impressed with the culture of "show me the stats" when it comes to subjects like financing, startups, technology, engineering, etc. Not sure why that dissipates when a marketing topic arises.

ajkohn 16y ago
Well, the impact on search query length may be negligible but there are other ways in which Instant may be changing search behavior. I have a small slice of data I hope to post in the very near future.
- ajkohn 16y ago
  Here's some preliminary data that shows that Google Instant may have changed the distribution of clicks by rank, with more emphasis being put on results above the fold. http://bit.ly/dAzvX3 http://bit.ly/dAzvX3 It's not about the query behavior, but about assessment behavior. As such, your mileage may vary based on your particular rank for terms. Outside of this analysis, the keyword length could remain the same, but a site may receive less traffic if the auto complete algorithm has changed for critical terms. Again, this will vary site by site - and where one loses, another will gain.

klochner 16y ago

What percentage of people actually visit google to search? It's much less "instant" if you add in the time to get to the google page. I user the address bar in chrome and my browser search bar in firefox.

chanux 16y ago

Fast company article about Google instant and ad impressions - http://www.fastcompany.com/1687976/google-instant-impressions-3-seconds-sneeze http://www.fastcompany.com/1687976/google-instant-impression...

jemfinch 16y ago

I can't remember the last time I used a screen whose native resolution was 1024x768.

RyanJones 16y ago

I can say that both on my personal sites, and on my Fortune 100 client websites, I have seen increases in search traffic from Google after instant was lost, not decreases.

VladRussian 16y ago

today is the day of science on HN - this 25% of Organic Free-Range Antibiotic-Free Search Results were definitely topped by masturbating squirrels. I bet squirrels had much more fun in their story than Google in its.

RexRollman 16y ago

I have to say that I am NOT a fan of Google's instant search. I hope that Google will one day offer a URI that has instant turned off by default, such as http://google.com/instantoff http://google.com/instantoff

jbillingsley 16y ago

I'd like to see a poll of users to find out what percent actually uses instant as it is meant to be used. I know I still do searches how I always have, by hitting enter. I imagine most non-technical users are still hitting enter.

archangel_one 16y ago

Regardless of whether they're correct about it lowering traffic or not, I strongly dislike the use of the word "steal" here. To me that signifies a strange sense of entitlement; the search results are not "yours" and you don't have a God-given right to them, so Google cannot steal them from you. You might as well claim that "I'm Feeling Lucky" steals your search results because users never see any mention of your site if you're in second place, or that showing 10 results per page is unfair to those in 11th place. I wonder a little if this reflects a general debasement of the word "steal". Some years ago it clearly referred to taking physical property, but maybe the smear campaigns from the music / movie industry have successfully extended the scope of the word to include things like this.

rmc 16y ago

You're assuming that each place on the first page gets equal amounts of traffic. The 4th result does not get the same amount of traffic as the 1st result, it gets much much less.