Google’s Realtime Search – What does it really mean for AdWords Advertisers?

Doing a quick search on Google this morning lead me to realise that at some point since yesterday, Google had enabled Realtime Search on my account. Upon experimenting with the new feature, it raised a few questions for me in relation to PPC.

Let me explain; As an example, If I were to search for “Cheap Car Insurance For Women” Google appears to run a search on each of these steps, including the initial phrase “cheap”.

Thomas Cook are currently bidding on that very generic term – this would be a reasonable term to display results against, if I was actually searching for “cheap holiday” phrases – it would be the first advert I see and I may very well click on it.

As I have discussed, this was not my intention at all, I actually want to search for a far more specific longer tail search term. As I carry on with “Cheap Car Insurance” it would seem that GoCompare have had an impression against their ad which I have no intention of clicking on.

I finally finish typing my search and have seen Aviva at the top of the paid search results.

The real questions that this raises for me are:

• Has Google attributed a search to the terms I was in the middle of searching for? (“Cheap” for example)
• Have the adverts shown had an impression attributed to them?
• If so, then this will mean a massive drop in CTR for generic search terms?
• How will Google combat this, or react?
• Does this mean that longer-tail search terms will end up being even more competitive?

Throw your thoughts in the comment hat…