Līve Ambitions

I’m a little late on this topic, but I wanted to share my thoughts on it.  I think it was Google who first implemented it, but the others quickly followed.

To me, the search query suggestion feature is just another blow to the SEO industry.  Although the feature adds convenience and saves time, I believe it also alters natural search behavior.  This hurts the little guys the most because people aren’t typing in the long-tail keywords anymore.  Now, people simply select the most popular suggestions even before they’re done typing the entire search query.  I often do this myself.

Undoubtedly, the search suggestion feature only helps to bring more traffic to the bigger websites (and corporations) that are already ranking in top positions for popular keywords.  Therefore, the mom-and-pop sites will have to work twice as hard to compete for the same keywords.  In addition, more money would have to be spent for SEO and marketing.

This may seem unfair for small business, but I think there is an ulterior motive behind the search query suggestion feature.  This is my theory: Since the little guys (small business) can’t compete for top 10 rankings naturally, they would have to resort to paid search marketing or PPC.  This would generate a lot more PPC business for the major search engines.  Why would they target small business?  Because small businesses account for 99.7% of all firms in the U.S.  This is a huge market, especially now that more and more small businesses are looking towards the internet for new customers.

How does this affect the users?  Sure, it adds convenience.  But does it alter natural search behavior?  I think so.  I’m not sure about everyone else, but when I do searches now, I catch myself choosing from the top 3 list of suggestions.

Has it changed your search behavior?