Malcolm Colmes pointed out yesterday the slight update to Google Instant which allowed the use of keyboard shortcuts. After hitting return, a user can navigate the results by pressing the up and down keys. With the PPC ads at the top and highlighted first, this means many more users may click through on the paid for ad rather than the organic listings.

This could prove a problem for many advertisers who bid on their own brand terms. While the benefits of this strategy included reiterating the message from the organic listing and preventing competitors from appearing as an alternative, there was always a concern that to some degree it was a waste of money as many users who would have clicked through via the organic listing instead clicked on the paid for ad. Fortunately though, bidding on your own brand terms has always been incredibly cheap, and so in most cases the benefits outweigh the cost.

Lazy Users

However users are already inherently lazy, and will often search for brand terms of sites even though they know the url -  incase they make a typo and because it’s marginally quicker. Now with the arrival of keyboard shortcuts, a quick double-tap on the Return key will take the user straight through to the site via the paid search.

So the balance of traffic between SEO and PPC brand terms can be expected to shift in the favour of PPC, and many advertisers may have to reconsider how efficient bidding on their brand terms are.

Even Lazier

Now I might be taking it a bit too far, or showing how I’m a prime example of a despicably lazy user, but I think that for at least the users that do adopt the use of the keyboard shortcuts, there may be an even bigger impact on the way they use the paid for ads.

With your wrists resting in front of the alphabetical keys while typing a search query, it’s easy to hit return with your right pinky. Once the results are displayed, to navigate the results means adjusting your right hand enough to use the arrow keys. While this seems a small effort when we’re used to lifting our hand fully to operate the mouse, I think that to a user who has adopted this method of using Google it just might be that tiny bit of subconscious incentive to just settle for the first link and hit return with their pinky, even though the link isn’t the one they would have naturally chosen.

On specific brand terms this is unlikely to be a factor (though my first point would), but when browsing generic terms such as ‘mens shirts’, the user has to pass up three options before reaching the organic listings, and while it won’t happen every time, I’m pretty confident I would more often that now just settle for one of the closer links.

New Importance of Top Position

The important thing here though is that the closer links are also the top position ads. While many advertisers have taken comfort in knowing they’re bidding on the most cost efficient ad position rather than the most expensive, this may no longer be the case and Google Instant may prove the catalyst of a bidding war where suddenly everyone wants to be the top position.

Whether or not we find the top position to be the most efficient, as the new behaviour of Google keyboard shortcuts takes hold across the user base, I’m quite certain that Google will see the revenue begin to pour in as panicking advertisers test the higher ad positions.