Search Engine Marketers are fleeing for their lives!

Once again Google has tilted the axis on which their world spins – precipitating a tectonic plate shift in the magnetic field surrounding SEM.

This isn't your seasonal Google Slap or climate induced algorithmic shift. This is far worse, something unprecedented. This is: Google Instant.

Sounds like a coffee, doesn't it?

And it's caffeinated, too: 'cause it's created quite a buzz.

You see, Google Instant allows people in search mode to see the search engine result page (SERP) of their inquiries ... one typed letter at a time.

Previously, Google required consumers to type in a full key word or phrase and then hit the enter key to view the 10,586,967 SERPs generated. Even though most searchers rarely venture into the dark underbelly of search (pages 2 and beyond).

But now, if, for example, you're searching for information on the "sexual preferences of American women" (for whatever reason, scholarly or prurient)....

As you begin to type, starting with the letter S, not only will Google attempt to intuit what you're looking for – it'll instantly present you with SERPs that correspond to Google's formulaic guesses.

So, at least on my browser, as soon as I type S, Google Instant suggests Skype. And the SERP, instantly generated, shows Skype in first position on the page (suggesting, presumably, that you should call a woman and ask her directly, rather than sneaking an online peak).

When I add the letter E, Sears is suggested (because, maybe that's where people living in Mountain View, California, go to learn about women)

Add the letter X, and Sex and the City pops up, (now we're getting somewhere) ... but then, add the letter U ... and Sexually Transmitted Diseases pops up! And worse, in first position on the SERP is the website for the Center for Disease Control.

Now that of course could have two obvious effects.

1. If your search is less than scholarly inspired – Google just shriveled your yearning and desire.

2. But if you're a marketer selling products related in whatever way to American female sexual preferences ... at best, your target market might have their arrival time at your website delayed, or, in a worse case scenario, their flight to your website will be cancelled, and they'll simply land and park somewhere else.

Long Tail Search: the Sad, Sad Ending!

Now, one might think Google Instant was created for the express purpose of ending long tail search marketing.

Not because Google has anything against a good tail. They just may be looking at it from a fiscal perspective rather than a, well, esthetic one.

You see, the reason most marketers covet the long tail is because there's just too much competition for those unapproachable hot babe keywords.

Plus, most small and medium seized marketers can't afford to keep pushing their way up to the bar to ply that hot babe keyword with expensive cocktails, in the hope she'll go home with them.

Anyway, I just don't think that was Google's motivation – to force the little guy to pay more or disappear.

They're stated mission, above all else, is to serve and satisfy the seeker of information (the BILLIONS of dollars they receive from marketers in the process is just incidental – icing on the cake, so to speak).

So I believe, therefore, to facilitate a faster, more nuanced and expedient user-interface, they created Google Instant.

Of course, because they are in the last analysis a business – some would say a galactic empire controlling both the Force and the Dark Side (oh, where have all the Jedi's gone?) – if they function as a purveyor of instant gratification (which we all want anyway), rather than as a disseminator of slower drip brew search, their bottom line will expand!

Nevertheless, and regardless of Google's true motivation, most marketers are confronting an SEM wall of worry. They fear a loss of revenue due to a loss of top of the page placement.

So they need a palliative – and a solution.

Nose Whiskers to the Rescue!

Someone, and probably a lot of someone's, are going to make a fortune using Nose Whiskers ... or selling them to marketers.

Unfortunately, I won't be one of them. But you could be ...

Here's why ...

If you're already employing best SEM and SEO practices, either as an end user or a seller of related services, you now have a new and powerful arrow in your marketing quiver.

For not only can you continue to optimize your marketing the old fashioned way, with keywords – you can also optimize your marketing messages with keyletters, or as I like to call them: Nose Whiskers (individual strands of hair that combine to form a moustache ... or for our purposes, a full word)!

Considering that there are 26 letters in the alphabet and infinite combinations, unrestricted by length ... the field is obviously wide open for profitable exploitation!

And so, eventually, you might wake up one fine marketing morning to discover that words – and even English as we now know it – will have been replaced by ... Google Speak!

No longer will words be constructed or defined according to Merriam Webster or Oxbridge, but by Google Instant and the SERPs it generates!

Like Chinese and Japanese pictograms, Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Sumerian Cuneiform, Google Speak will use symbols – letter combinations whose meaning will be derived by their context ... that is to say, the surrounding letter combinations and, on a higher level, their corresponding placement on SERPs!

Of course the key to maximizing the "message to market match" using Google Speak will be accomplished through the implementation of Nose Whisker Density (NWD) – in other words, as a marketer you will need to ensure that key letter combinations appear at the very beginning of any marketing message (actually, the term message will be replaced by the term impression, already in use in some erudite circles).

And the bidding on keyletters and keyletter combinations for PPC purposes will be similar to the keyword bidding model in use today. Pricing models though will be a bit more complicated, as price will be dependant on how close to the beginning of an impression the key letters are placed.

Are you still with me? If not, go back and re-read the last few paragraphs (and savor a language about to disappear).

But understand, this is only the first stage in the transformation of consumers and marketers into a Googlized commonwealth of complimentary and expedient interests.

In the final stages of Google Speak development, and because language will be market-based and otherwise unintelligible to a non-commercial culture, the Android operating system will be used to decipher our personal communications with one another!

The Google Commonwealth, as our brave new world might be called, will obviously be binary in structure: Marketer and consumer.

Interactive association, the relaying of desires, needs, wants and calls to action, either face to face or via the Internet, will only be realized through devices that employ Google Speak. And, of course, the Android operating system will be perfectly positioned to fulfill this task.

That is until our vocal chords and the language centers in our brains can adapt to Google Speak naturally.

What? All this is a little too far fetched, you say?

Twenty, thirty years ago, when our ancestors were dropping nickels into a pay phone and searching for a mimeograph machine in the yellow pages ... had a voice from the heavens (now referred to as cyberspace) told them that their wired descendents would be talking to a POD publisher in China on a Droid over a 4G network and coding information in HTML using a WYSIWYG editor for anyone in the world to read on an Apple's LED screen the instant they pressed "enter"... how far fetched, and unintelligible, would that have been?