Thoughts on Google's Autocomplete hurting organic SEO?

[MERGE-Chicago]

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.

[b4cab]

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.

[RangeMarketing]

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!

[MERGE-Chicago]

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.

[Ray-pp]

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.