I’m sure that most of you will be already aware of Google new product – Google Instant. Those who don’t, below is a short description.

Google Instant is a new search experience by Google which will show you the search results as you type (Yes, you are right. There is no need to press that “Search” Button).

According to Google, it will save few milliseconds of user in every query which means saving more than 3.5 billion seconds a day or 11 hours per second globally. More about Google Instant.

But this article in not about Google Instant, it is about the impact of Google Instant on PPC advertising. In this article, we’ll try to find out that how this technology can make or destroy your overall PPC Campaigns.

So let’s start

Traffic from long tail keywords can decrease. If you are a PPC advertiser with a limited budget and mostly bid on long tail keywords then Google Instant can force you to rethink about your strategy.

For e.g.- IF you are a car rental company in Miami and used to bid for keyword “Miami car rental” then you might be seeing a drop in traffic from your ad campaigns , because user now won’t have to type the complete keyword, and can see relevant ads just by typing “Miami” and “Miami C” (Miami Car) so there will be very less searches for keywords like “Miami Car rental”.

Higher Campaign Costs

Since users will now rarely type long tail keywords now (as discussed in our example), Google instant in a way will now force advertisers to compete on shorter keywords like Miami ( from our example). That means advertisers now have to pay more to Google for the same amount of traffic.

Reduced CTR rate

If you’ve ever managed a Google Adwords campaign then you must be aware of the importance of a high quality score for each keyword. A high quality score for a keyword means – how positioning of your ad at lower cost-per-click (CPC).

And, to get the high quality score you must have a high CTR. Please check the detailed post to get an idea about the relation between your Quality score and CTR: “How important Is Click Through Rate In Google’s Quality Score Formula?“

According to Google, Below are the three ways to count a valid impression:

• When User type a query and click anywhere on the page;
• When user chooses a particular query by pressing “Enter”, hitting the search button, or selecting a predicted query;
• When User stops typing and results are displayed for minimum 3 seconds,

Yes, Just 3 seconds. Since it usually takes more than 3 seconds to analyze the search results, or even more if a user is slow typist. It means that Google Instant can increase the number of you ad impressions which can dilute your CTR and eventually decrease the overall quality score of that keyword. Low quality score equals to higher cost per click and more money in the Google pocket.

There are three most important ways how Google instant can affect your PPC campaigns. Though, it will take some to see the accurate results. You must start thinking about ways to improve conversion rate – by improving your ad copies and landing pages to compensate the increased campaign costs.

Do you know of any other way by which Google instant can put an impact on your ad campaigns? Feel free to share it in comments below. Till then- Happy Bidding and Keep Testing!