Thoughts on Google's Autocomplete hurting organic SEO?
-
A client sent over an article about how Google's Autocomplete eliminates your chance for clicks. Saying that if your competitor is higher than you, the user will bypass the page one organic rank and click on a specific business from the autocomplete which in turn presents an entire page one result for that business. So in a sense they are wondering why they're doing organic SEO if potential customers are just going to bypass the page one organic results.
I would love to hear thoughts from like minded people on this as I have to start proving my case with articles, facts, data, and research.
-
I had a problem with this when auto-complete caome out. The name of the site I was working on had two words in the name, the first word was also the name of a competitors site. If you visited their site once, that was it... you weren't getting to the second word to find us!
We saw a 30% drop in visits. Some of it came back, but not all of it. I discussed this with our Google rep at the time, and they assured me it had nothing to do with auto-complete, but I couldn't find any other explanation.
-
Hi Thomas,
Just wanted to chime in. That's a good question, and I don't know of such data that is out there, but you could always use Google's Keyword Planner tool to get average volume of searches for the branded search terms that Google is suggesting in auto-complete.
You can also use this tool here to find suggested search terms to look at volume. The terms this tool pulls are actually just what Google suggests, aka auto-complete terms.
Good luck!
-
Thanks for a great response!! I will definitely work this into my response to the client. I'm wondering if Google would release any data (or it even exists) that would say "X% of people click Google Instant results instead of their organic query" or if that is impossible to track.
I'm formulating an answer from a great article from Matt McGee of Search Engine Land that raises the question "Does Google Instant 'Kill SEO'" and Matt firmly says there's no chance.
-
I think auto-complete, in this sense, can work for you as an SEO and demonstrate the importance of organic impact to the client. If the client is noticing that a competitor is routinely being suggested as an auto-complete, then it's easy for that client to recognize the value of the organic result and therefore easier for them to decide to put more resources (money, time) into the organic strategy.
The SERPs are forever competitive and there are strategies you can take to help your client become that auto-complete suggestion from Google. Focusing on specific terms and using quality content to enforce those terms will help the client's website become a trusted resource for the suggested term. Start targeting those terms more heavily and propose strategies like reviewing a competitor's policy and try to rank for their own auto-complete.
Think creatively around these auto-complete suggestions and gain back some of that organic traffic. Then begin to think of how you can focus on varied auto-complete suggestions to get your own brand to become one of them. Why has the competitor become an auto-complete suggestion? Did they product articles around a specific topic that have been a steady resource for users? If so, maybe that content is becoming outdated or can be expanded upon - write up a new article covering the topic and become that better resource.
If you want immediate traffic from those terms, think of using AdWords targeted to auto-complete suggestions and write creative ads that compete on the value proposition the user was searching for.
While auto-complete may eat at your organic traffic, it doesn't have to and I think it is a good resource for ideas for content and strategy.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Many meta descriptions ignored by Google
Hi all, We have recently added the meta descriptions for more than 50 pages of our website. It's been more than a week and all the pages have been indexed. But still I can see most of the pages in Google results didn't show up with recently added meta description, but the content from page like how it used to be. I wonder what's wrong with this scenario. Please guide of someone aware of this. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Satisfaction survey on Google search results
Anybody else noticing Google satisfaction surveys on long-tail results? I'm only seeing it when there are no ads... 6071fb3341.png
Algorithm Updates | | Propecta1 -
International foreign language SEO questions
I'm looking to add some foreign language pages to a website and have a lot of international SEO questions. I think the overall question is can you do SEO yourself if you are a native English speaker for a language you don't speak (like Chinese)? 1. How do you go about doing keyword research for a foreign language? What tools are available? 2. How do you know what search engines you should optimize for in a different country? And where can you find the technical SEO requirements for each? I'm wondering things like title tag length for Baidu. Or is the Title length different for Yahoo Japan vs. US? Do you write titles and meta tags in Chinese/Japanese for respective countries? Etc.
Algorithm Updates | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Does articles for SEO purposes have a minimal and maximum word count in ordered to be crawled/indexed by Google and other search engines?
Does articles for SEO purposes have a minimal and maximum word count in ordered to be crawled/indexed by Google and other search engines?
Algorithm Updates | | WebRiverGroup0 -
Are you still seeing success with EMD's?
I am curious if any other SEO's are still seeing success with exact matching domains. I am not seeing ANY changes to any of my clients rankings since the "Exact Match Domain" filter came about in September. Also while I have conducted SERP audits in my neck of the woods I am noticing EMD's are still doing very well. What are you seeing?
Algorithm Updates | | clarktbell0 -
Multiple Listings in Results fading Local SEO
Lately I am noticing multiple listings for results seem to be fading away. Example is one domain being listed twice for a search phrase The Home page for example and an Internal Page. Is anyone else seeing this? Safe to say Google wants to see 10+ individual domains per results page?
Algorithm Updates | | bozzie3110 -
Indexing well in Google but not in Yahoo/Bing - WHY?
Been using SEOMOZ now to analyze and crawl a client's website for a while now. One thing I've noticed is that our client's website is indexing well with Google. a few thousand pages are being indexed. However, when it comes to Yahoo and Bing, the website only has a 100+ pages indexed. We've submitted updated sitemaps to Google and Bing and have been fixing any broken links, and on-page SEO. Content is also good. Here's the website: www.imaginet.com.ph Any suggestions/recommendations are highly appreciated. Thank you!
Algorithm Updates | | TheNorthernOffice790 -
SEO Faith Shaker... help!!
Something has happened which is, well inexplicable to me... I'm stumped! We have a client that has two sites which compete for the same keywords. One is a .com, the other is a .co.uk. They have different content so there's no dupe worries. We have, for the past few months been carrying out SEO for the .com site. It's doing great. We don't do anything with the .co.uk site, which, incidentally dropped from 2nd (under the .com) to 9th after Panda for its main keyword. The owner of the site has switched the .co.uk to Wordpress and now that site, with the same content, same links, same social signals, etc... (nothing was done to it except the platform being changed) has suddenly shot up above the .com for not only its main keyword but most of the others too. What gives?? It doesn't even have a link from the .com site! So, the .com which has undergone SEO is now being beaten by the .co.uk which hasn't. The .com is still directly underneath it. It feels like all of the things we know about SEO, all of the ranking factors and everything are being totally undermined here, just due to a change to Wordpress. Surely that can't be it?? The .com is an older domain, has more content, has always done well, has more links and from better places, and all the social stuff surrounding the business is targeted at it. This isn't a penalization issue or anything like that, this is simply a matter of the .co.uk suddenly blasting above everything for no apparent reason. Any ideas?? I know that there "might" be a tiny, tiny, tiny advantage of the country TLD but that's not enough to do this, and the .co.uk always did worse before.
Algorithm Updates | | SteveOllington1