Those of us working with SEO had to come to grips with the fact that every “searcher” gets slightly different results (due to their search history) making our jobs slightly harder, but now Google is psychic. In an effort to save 2 seconds per search, you no longer have to type in a word or phrase before Google will present you the results.

And while the day Google Instant was introduced A was for AOL, now it is for Amazon! So… do we know have to try to optimized for a letter (gosh instead of putting our effort into cookies, we should focus on “c”!)? I realize that some people will start adding letters into their keywords, but I don’t suggest this as Google does not look at keywords in determining its web search rank, so this will not help you and it will only confuse the other search engines.

And how is that going to work out for Google AdWords, not so well it seems. As I looked through the alphabet (one letter at a time) only a few letters had AdWords. So is Google Instant a revenue “killer” for Google AdWords? Only time will tell.

So how is Google Instant really changing SEO? For the moment this will not change how we optimize pages. Content is still king. And I truly believe that with good content, good use of social media, good backlinks and all the tricks in our toolkit that we will continue to allow our clients to be easily found in search engines, include Google.

I think it will make a difference in long tail keywords. Many of the long tail searches are based on three and four word search terms. I am no longer sure people will type that many words in before Goggle Instant gives them a result they are happy with, or at least willing to click on. I will be evaluating long tail searches to see if my theory holds true.

The things I can tell you: it is more important now to have good page titles and meta descriptions. Google still uses this information and more importantly, it was what searchers read to determine which of the search results they will click on. Register in your local search engines sites such as Google Places, Local Yahoo and Local Bing. Claim “your” page on review sites such as Yelp! and ask your clients to add reviews to all of these (Google Places, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp! all have places where you client’s can review your business. The more reviews you have the higher you can rank in the search results!).

Happy searching and remember anything you want on Google, you can find in an Instant!