Google Updates Search Results As You Type

Google appears to be slowly rolling out an update that allows results on their search engine results page to change as you begin entering a new search query. Whether or not this feature will make it through beta and roll out to all Google search users is still up in the air, but a representative from Google confirmed to Techcrunch that this is indeed being tested.

So what would this update mean to your current search engine optimization efforts? First off, you may experience fewer click-throughs from a search engine results page if people begin modifying their query. The best thing to do is ensure that if your website is ranking for a particular phrase, it is also ranking for all close variations.

For example, if your website ranks #1 in Google for “search engine marketing company” you will want to ensure you also rank for “search engine marketing companies”, “search engine marketing company in…” and “search engine marketing company services”.

In order to rank for the variations, make sure there are several variations on the page that is ranking by working them into the body copy. Also, try to build links using all the keyword variations as the anchor text of the links. Even if Google does not roll out this update to everyone, it is still good practice to rank for all the variations of a given phrase.