The Google “Instant Search” team showed off one-finger search. Othar Hansson, a senior Google engineer, demonstrated (twice) how typing the letter “W” gave “weather in San Francisco” as the first result.
A brand that is called up by Google Instant, on the very first four rows of the letter, is now the golden crown for search engine optimization (SEO).
I took a look at what came up for each letter in Google Instant: (Your results will vary somewhat by your location.)
A is for … Amazon, AOL, Apple, ATT.
B is for … BART, Bank of America, Best Buy, Bing.
C is for … Craigslist, Costco, CNN, Chase.
D is for … DMV, Dictionary, Droid X, Disneyland.
E is for … Ebay, ESPN, Expedia, Evite.
F is for … Facebook, Facebook login, Fandango, FIFA.
G is for … Gmail, Google maps, Google, Great America.
H is for … Hotmail, Hulu, Home Depot, HP.
I is for … Iphone, Ikea, Inception, IMDB.
J is for … Jet Blue, Jeremy Lin, Jamba Juice, Java.
K is for … Kaiser, KTUV, Kayak, Kohls.
L is for … Lowes, Lost, LinkedIn, Limewire.
M is for … Mapquest, Myspace, MSN, Maps.
N is for … Netflix, Nordstrom, NBA, News.
O is for …Outsidelands, Orbitz, OSH, Office Depot.
P is for … Pandora, PG&E, Paypal, Petco.
Q is for … Quotes, QVC, Quicktime, Quinoa.
R is for … REI, Ross, Redfin, Rosh Hashanah.
S is for … Skype, SFGate, Sears, Southwest.
T is for … Target, Twitter, Thesaurus, Travelocity.
U is for … USPS, UPS, United Airlines, Utube.
V is for … Verizon, Virgin America, VLC, Verizon Wireless.
W is for … Weather, Walmart, Wells Fargo, Wikipedia.
X is for … Xbox, XKCD, XM Radio, Xfinity.
Y is for … Yahoo, Youtube, Yahoo Mail, Yelp.
Z is for … Zillow, Zappos, Zipcodes, Zynga.
If you can get your brand into the one-letter list you are golden. This is now the holy grail of SEO.
