Google Instant Search A to Z and Why Advertisers Could Foot the Bill for Predictive Results

If you experienced Google’s mysterious doodles over the past few days (there were bouncing balls, then a ghost like clandestine logo), you may have been aware that something was going on at the search giant. Today, Google unveiled instant search which shows results almost as soon as you start typing. There’s still no word on exactly how it relates to bouncing, time killing balls, but we can see advantages and disadvantages to the new search functionality.

For anyone on a smartphone, it’s a huge advantage. Whether you’re on a Blackberry with a real keyboard, or a touchscreen device like the iPhone, typing on phones is annoying at best and a total pain at worst. If you’re searching from a mobile device, being able to see results after a letter or two can definitely save some of the frustration that comes from constantly hitting the back button because you’ve missed a letter, or tapped the wrong one.

For anyone advertising on Google against any of the most popular terms, it could be a bad thing. Take the letter “S” for example. Typing that letter, while searching from New York on a traditional computer, brings up results for Staples. Currently, Staples is the only company advertising on that term. But what if you’re looking for the less popular “soup” instead? You still see ads for Staples and Southwest Airlines along the way. Now perhaps you are interested in office supplies and Southwest, but it’s not like you were exactly looking for those terms. Still, Staples and all of the companies advertising for cheap airfare against the term “Southwest” have their ads displayed for those not-quite-searches searches. While they still only pay based on how many people click the ads, part of how Google determines what to charge advertisers comes from the clickthrough rate of an ad – clickthrough rate is the number of times an ad is shown, divided by the number of clicks it receives. The logic goes that more relevant ads will be clicked more often, so those advertisers should pay less per click.

But if those ads are being shown to people who weren’t actually looking for a particular term, chances are they aren’t going to click, which would reduce the clickthrough rate and likely raise click costs artificially.

From A to Z, we played the alphabet game to find out which brands, websites and terms are likely in for a spike in search traffic. Searches were conducted in New York, results could be different in other cities or countries.

A is forAmazon, B is for Bank of America, C is for Craigslist, D is for dictionary, E is for eBay, F is for Facebook, G is for Gmail, H is for Hotmail, I is for Ikea, J is for Jet Blue, K is for Kmart, L is for LIRR (Long Island Railroad), M is for Mapquest, N is for Netflix, O is for Orbitz, P is for Pandora, Q is for quotes, R is for realtor, S is for Staples, T is for Target, U is for UPS, V is for Verizon, W is for weather, X is for Xbox, Y is for Yahoo and Z is for Z100 (New York radio station).