Much is being said about the speed of Google Instant, the tech giant’s widely hyped upgrade to its core search product. But this is not the most important part for travel.
The post on the official Google Blog goes into some detail about the primary reason for doing Instant – saving the average searcher “two to five seconds per search”.
“That may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up. With Google Instant, we estimate that we’ll save our users 11 hours with each passing second!”
It does this by throwing search results into the page in real-time, as the user types their query and tapping to into the existing Suggest tool, something many users are apparently already using a lot.
Fair enough.
But an interesting and important element of Instant is its ability to tap into the location of the user.
The demo to the media in San Francisco today made great play of how a searcher can start typing in “weather” and the engine will automatically display forecasts for the home city of the user, presumably calculated either by IP address or the registered location on the user’s Google profile.
So perhaps this has interesting ramifications for how users will browse search results? Probably, to some extent.
But when applied to mobile, which Google confirms will happen with Android phones in a few months, then the idea of location search is worth examining.
This is, in some respects, not about the technology but about the expectations of the user. A mobile user will soon accept that searching on a mobile will automatically display results relevant to their location, something that destinations services need to consider carefully.
Why? And how can travel companies prepare for this, at least in terms of SEO? Well, as with so many enhancements made to search tools, quality of content from an indexing and identification perspective will need to be high.
If speed is now supposedly the issue, then the patience of user’s when faced with poor or useless descriptive text for indexable pages will also surely become a factor.
A final area to mention, inevitably, is around Google and plans specifically for travel as a result of its proposed acquisition of ITA Software.
Presuming, as most do, Google decides to use the ITA technology to produce some sort of super-enhanced travel search functionality within its core search engine, then some parts of the Google Instant programme become a major issue.
Speed and reliability in travel search, especially around flights, is an extremely difficult area to master. So, Google Instant, once plugged into whatever platform comes as a result of the ITA deal, might return airfares at an impressive fraction of a second, but what happens if those results are not up to scratch?
Simply put: it is difficult, if perhaps impossible, to deliver accurate real time results of the magnitude that Google would expect.
This is all down to caching of airline content (seats, availability, schedules), something which its proposed acquisition ITA still uses, alongside many of the others in the ecosystem.
So if a user searches for a fare that Google results say is available, but the system has not caught up with the correct availability of that fare on the source (the airline), then the user experience is going to be impaired, perhaps to a greater extent given that Google is now preaching the speed and wonderfulness of its search.
Once again, this comes back to the expectations of users. Speed may slowly becoming king in the mind of Google, but reliability of search results is still likely to remain what makes or breaks trust amongst consumers.
NB: And all this is before the industry gets its head around issues with keyword buying.
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About Kevin May
Fascinating change, the quote from Google Analytics blog is particularly compelling “you may find that certain keywords receive significantly more or fewer impressions moving forward”.
My feeling is that one of the biggest changes will be an increase in Adwords click through and a decrease in organic click-through. Adwords ads now take up a significantly higher proportion of above the fold real estate and I am sure less peple will be going below the fold with these changes. I imagine a proportion of users will never end up selecting a search term, instead selecting one of the search results that appears as they type. It seems fairly evident that users won’t scroll below the fold whilst they are typing or using the arrow keys to select different search terms in the drop down.
@ben
agree on all your points…
i suspect the desire (and competition) to ensure appearance on page 1 will be even more important now, too.
Yes, the user experience will be impaired if the result is not available or the price changes significantly when selected…but…
…Pretty much every other online travel flight booking engine has this same problem anyway, but they combine it with a really slow and unresponsive UI and response time (really slow, like 7 seconds to the results screens in some cases).
If Google implemented instant flight search I think the improvement to the experience through speed (compared to the rest of the market) would outweigh the issues that are inherent in most flight searches. At the size and traffic volume that Google is they would happily risk the same UX issues as competitors to be able to release a really fast UI for flights.
The impact to search marketing is going to be really interesting to watch. Start typing Barbados and you get the top paying Adwords bidders who are bidding on the location name (expensive) and in natural you get the tourist board etc. Then continue typing so your query becomes ‘barbados hotels’; different Adwords bidders and very different natural search results. Then continue to ‘barbados hotels st james’ and again results have changed (Adwords not so much this time). Natural search now includes smaller operators and Tripadvisor.
The problem (or opportunity) with the above scenario is that a user will start to see results that are relevant to them after only typing a few characters so they may not finish the longer query and end up clicking on the tourist board. Great for the board, not so good for the smaller guys who are optimised on more niche, long tail keywords. Same for Adwords, the broader single keyword bidders (more expensive) stand more chance of getting the clicks than the little guys who aim for the tail.
Going to be fun watching how this impacts stats and Adword accounts!
I notice in the Google Instant video that images showed up in the search results. I think there will definitely be an impact on the use of images.
Visual/image brand marketing is a larger element to influencing consumers, to be familiar and comfortable with a brand before they enter a point of sale, even more so than a ‘simple’ Adword.
Having a brand logo pop up, even for a split second, while someone is typing their search result (possibly for something completely unrelated) can make quite a subconscious impact on the susceptible.
I would expect that bigger players will favour short-tails/’Adletters’, not only for the opportunity to be seen in early search typing, but also when they realise the value of attaching an image to them as well.
Personal opinion. As a user this seems quite complex. Predictive search was useful, because it saved me time in typing the full query. But displaying a new set of results at each keystroke is disorienting. For many non tech users for whom Google home page = The Web, I wonder how they’ll get it.
Agreed Danielle. My mother has recently started to go online (mid-60′s) and she saw it last night and thought she’d broken something
It’s a really dramatic change in UI and will confuse the heck out of some people at first. It could result in a totally different user behavior on search which is obviously going to impact SEO and PPC…
Google has reported a gradual increase in the average length of search terms over the past couple of years, and users have got used to typing in longer, more specific queries to arrive at specific results. And of course in response, it has become worthwhile for companies to target longer terms as key words and the longer tail has become longer over time. I agree with Steve’s point; I wonder whether the determined user will still find it more useful to keep typing until they arrive at the full long-tail query, and thus the specific results that they hoped to see. Or whether they will become distracted as semi-relevant shorter tail results come into view part way through their query. I suspect the later may occur.
As I played with the new search this morning I found myself looking for the top prize of coming up first under ‘a’ (Argos vs. Amazon win out) or ‘tr’ (national rail enquiries have it covered). Perhaps we’ll find companies seeking to appear first for partial terms instead of full terms, and there may be more cross-industry competition for partial terms…
I have to ask, why bother? Does it make my searching experience better and quicker? No.
I guess it enables the user experience and (may be) speed as well… once we started using Google Suggest, it helped us formulate our search text in a better way which lead to better results… Now with Google instant I can see what would be the search result… so i can refine my search text…. I feel it’ll definitely give me better experience.
Hi Kevin, all:
Google Instant falls flat for location-specific searches like travel due to its heavy reliance on the text entered. There’s a world of difference–literally–between “flights from boston” and “flights from bangalore”. And while Google can use your location to define your origin, how can it guess your intended destination?
But the real problem is for AdWords advertisers, who may suddenly experience a costly surge in impressions to no good end. I just posted an example and some recommendations for travel advertisers on the Cambridge Aviation Research blog: “Travel advertisers: Beware Google Instant’s instantly increased impressions”(http://ow.ly/2Coev). I look forward to your feedback!
As far as I understand it, The cost of sponsoring a keyword with AdWords is dependant upon CTR (Click Through Rate), Max Bid CPI (Cost Per Impression)/ Max Bid CPC (Cost Per Click) and LPQ (Landing Page Quality).
- The CTR is calculated via clicks divided by impressions, multiplied by 100.
On this basis the increase in impressions would reduce the cost of from the CTR. But it would also increase the chances of having an ad disabled by breaching below the required 0.05% minimum that AdWords ask to be maintained.
- Max Bid CPI is undoubtedly going to increase the cost and it’s advisable to monitor CTR and base CPI max bids accordingly.
Your example showed just over 7 times more impressions. But it won’t necessarily translate directly in to a 7 fold increase in cost based on Max Bid CPI unless all of those impressions are from the same bidder.
I wonder how cost effective it would be to turn to CPC instead of CPI now that impressions are going to increase.
It would be all good and well letting Google Instant give some free advertising when consumers are searching for something else, but the clicks are still needed, even more so now that the increased chances of false impressions threatening ads with being disabled, by lowering their CTR too much.
Pardon:
*On this basis the increase in impressions would reduce the rating of the CTR.*
Though I haven’t read whether a higher CTR means a higher or lower cost.
Hi Johnny:
Thanks for the reply. You’re right — fortunately for most campaigns, the surge of impressions shouldn’t cause a directly proportional increase in cost, but plummeting CTRs could unleash its own chaos as campaigns unexpectedly go dark.
(On a related note, it might be an interesting study to see how prevalent CPM campaigns are in the Travel industry. My anecdotal evidence suggests that Travel advertisers are among the more savvy.)
I take a contrary view, though, about the long-term benefits of presenting more impressions per search, free or not. As their volume increases, I fear their impact is eroded even further. And I was hoping to stave off a web of rollover pop-ups and “click here to continue to our site” links for a little longer…
Thanks,
Jeffrey