The launch of Google’s latest search enhancing tool, Google Instant, will change the way we search and are searched for via the internet. The latest development in auto-complete functionality has enabled the user to view SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) before finishing the query, and without the need to press enter or the search button.

This is a clever, tidy piece of design on the search engine’s part, offering quicker and more efficient access to the end result. Pre-Instant searches were thought to have lasted, on average, some 25 seconds. With the advent of the new feature, it is believed that 2-5 seconds will be saved per query as a result.

Whilst performing a Google search was quick previously, it is now almost… instantaneous.

This is all very well, but how will the latest evolution of search affect SEOs (search engine optimisers) whose task of utilising search term usage in the process of driving sites up the rankings – amongst many other things – may be negatively affected at the expense of quicker search results. Search engine optimisation company QueryClick Ltd do not adhere to such pessimism.

With the SEO industry embroiled in a state of panic, QueryClick Ltd are not clamouring for the nearest industry exit, far from it:

“A similar epidemic of paranoia swept across the industry when personalised search first came to prominence, an feeling which has turned out to have been unjustified. The development of Google Instant may be a slight game-changer, but it does not signify the death of SEO.”

Certainly, this seems to be the dominant opinion emanating from the Google camp as well, with vice president of search products and user experience, Marissa Mayer reassuring SEO practitioners that there will be only a “small change for the SEO community.”