Wow, this is woefully inane and mindless. Here's hoping it's just linkbait.
- AJ Kohn
AJ, the answer is probably. I think it has no impact, as SEO would still push things to the top. All instant does is find them faster. :)
- Louis Gray
Louis - there could be some impact on SEO, but it just changes things. You might focus more on optimizing for auto-complete terms (many SEOs, me included already optimize for suggests/auto-complete) and the time per result set (e.g. - how long do they look at a result set) may go down - which may mean more focus on Titles and Meta Descriptions to help draw the eye and reinforce that users found the right results.
- AJ Kohn
Oh man, hadn't thought of that. SEOs are going to start putting p pa par part parti partia partial terms in their meta tags and such. Yuk.
- Steve and 3 other people
It will be interesting to see if SEOs try to optimizing for partials ... not sure that will work since it's based on the auto-complete term - but I know folks will try.
- AJ Kohn