Today, Google released Instant Search. Users will now see results from popular searches displayed as they are typing in their search query. In other words, type in a search query “watching weight” and you will see results displayed for “Wal-Mart”, “Watching Movies”, and so forth as more letters are typed.

As these results are displayed, so are the associated ads for those search queries. This will lead to an increased number of impressions for all those broad keywords you may have in your campaign.

So how does this affect an ads click through rate?

According to Google, an impressions will only be counted if:

• A user types in a search query and then clicks anywhere on the page (a search result, an ad, related search, etc.)
• A user chooses a specific query by clicking the search button, pressing Enter, or selecting one of the predicted queries
• The user stops typing and the ad is displayed for at least 3 seconds

The 3 second rule will probably lead to the greatest increase in non-qualified impressions and thus decrease an ad’s CTR.

A slow reader may take 3 seconds to read the suggested searches as they are typing out a query leading to a false impression if you happened to have an ad up on the temporarily displayed results page.

Of course it is far too early to predict, but Google believes the effect in impressions will be outweighed by the fact that Instant Search helps users build search queries that more directly relate to them.

Instant Search is a great feature that increases the usability of Google, but Adwords advertisers should keep an eye on their stats particularly for their broad keywords.

Adwords, PPC by Aaron
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010