Google has indicated in the past that its goal is to bring a faster web experience to its users. Matt Cutts has gone over the benefits of Google’s new search system numerous times. The fact that the company has been testing the idea of “live search” means that are pretty much heading in that direction. Showing searchers with an updating stream of results as they type is interesting but could it actually take away from pay per click campaigns?

Is the long-tail making a come-back? It never went anywhere to get started with. But when you work for a company that has a huge PPC budget, it’s easy to just focus on those general or branded terms and forget long-term keywords. You can be sure that Google does not intend to take from its business away by making the web faster. On the contrary, I am quite confident that the company will find a way to get more out of advertisers and improve its search results at the same time (and if one has to go, then …).

It does seem as if it will be more difficult for small players to dominate the search engines without top quality content. With Google’s focus fully on long-tail keywords, a live search feature would bring a whole new dimension to the whole PPC/SEO game. SEO and PPC have gone hand in hand forever. Google’s new approach means marketers need to pay more attention to their keyword lists and provide content/products/pages that are even more laser targeted.

It is difficult to predict what Google’s plans will mean for marketers over the long run. Marketers could focus more on middle-terms or put an extra effort towards dominating the long-tail of the market. Let’s just say there will be more than one way to optimize those PPC campaigns for maximum conversion.