lot of discussions are going on tis topic and at last i to got the same in my mind. Did Google Instant effect SEO, if so tell how to optimize accordingly. thanks.
Again, Google Instant is mostly update feature on showing results and indirectly affected the serp so there's nothing new on Google since the Caffeine update..
It is not effective against your SEO directly but indirect may be counted. The instant displayed results could distract your visitor which may not done their typing yet form typed the full keyword you are ranking for. Your visitor numbers might dropped if you are not ranking for all relative keywords, both short and long version.
Sxperm is probably the closest with his analysis- it doesn't directly affect your SERP, but it does distract visitors from ever getting to your site (i.e. not typing the entire keyword phrase that they intended to because of the "instant" results). I think that the main reason Google implemented it was because as soon as you start typing, you start seeing their ads- its a kind of declaration of war on the "I'm feeling lucky button" which has been costing google something like an estimated $200 million a year due to the fact that you never get to see an ad if you use it.
No effect of SEO, but affected the searches of some words, because google instant, together with keyword predictions are giving advantage of some keywords and disadvantage of anothers.
Sites aren't ranking differently, but the really long tail searches are going to dwindle. Bad news for forums or other sites with lots and lots of pages, but it's not drastic. Folks aren't going to type out 6 phrase search anymore - they'll stop at 2,3, 4 whatever until they narrow it down enough.
I think it's going to affect keyword volumes. Suggested searches will go up while other searches will go down. It's just what Eric Schmit wants when he says that people "want Google to tell them what to do".
according to me.. there is no effect on seo..... only the speed of search result has been increased....
No effect on seo...Google Instant only find information faster by showing relevant result for what you may be looking for.......