Highena

Google have just made a major change to their search facility. It now shows results as you type. While this may be a great and time-saving feature for searchers, could it prove costly for less popular websites which rely on search terms targetted to their site?

As a searcher I’ve found the new Google Instant very handy and time-saving, but as a website developer I found it a bit of a worry. As an example, typing in “Highena” the site itself didn’t even come up on page 1, whereas if you click the “search” button it was top every time. If people come to rely on the new feature, I have to ask will the site ever be found in the future? Hopefully yes, because most of the traffic goes to individual pages rather than the homepage, so all being fair they will continue to occupy the top spots before the searcher has finished typing.

What of those sites which rely mainly on searches for their site name?

Now with Google Instant, with Highena, before you actually click the “search” button we get a list of pages related to “hyenas”, the top being a selection of images of hyenas and the first listing Wikipedia’s page on hyenas. Google is obviously guessing that I can’t spell and is offering me the relevant alternatives.

Is Google trying to be too clever? Is this more of a benefit for the big boys and the little guys are going to get left further behind when trying to rank on the search engines?

Maybe in time the results will get better and Highena will indeed come out on top for the search term of its name. We’ll see.

As a searcher Instant may save a few milliseconds, but if the search results don’t reflect the search it’s just time lost searching for the right site. It will be interesting t see how this pans out and how it affects other websites.