Yes, yes I know you know that Google Instant won’t really affect SEO or PPC, but did you know that there is a special blacklist of ‘bad’ words that Google will block results for when you start typing them in? (WARNING!: lots of very non-work-safe language in this link.)
Supposedly, Google’s overall plan is to usher in a new wave in search which brings us what we want to see faster and more accurately – essentially predicting what we want to see before we have finished typing it in. Great, but what if people want to search for 'naughty' things? Currently when you type in one of Google’s blacklisted words in Instant search, as soon as you hit that key letter that turns, for example, ‘Paris’ into ‘Paris Hilton’ Google jumps up in embarrassed shock and scurries off with all the instant results to hide under the bed. Of course you can just hit return to bring up your results for whatever your depraved mind can imagine, but the question is – will the results still be fair for everyone?
Now ‘Paris Hilton’ is probably the tamest of the blacklisted words, (they get naughtier from here starting with ‘Playboy’, ‘Marijuana’ and (tee hee) ‘lovemaking’). But for someone who is a legitimate fan of the talented and undervalued Paris Hilton, who has worked hard building and optimising their Paris Hilton fan website, is it not completely unfair that they should have a different search engine result opportunity as fans of the equally talented Nicole Richie?
Google may feel that preventing people from accidentally seeing results for potentially offensive websites is a way of not being evil, but is it not an act of gross inequality?
So Will it Affect SEO?
If your keywords include one of the words on the blacklist, it may be worth your while changing this to something else. The difference in the number of impressions you receive may be negligible (as remember – you only have to hit return) but you will lose out on some immediate or ‘instant’ traffic.
I know I have asked more questions than provided answers but what more can you do when Google has this power to censor what it wants. I guess my point is that while I agree that certain keywords should be hidden from innocent eyes, there should be a better approach to censorship than this. Actually, don’t Google have a search filter?
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