"Search Box Optimization"

[McFaddenGavender]

A client of ours recently received en email from a random SEO "company" claiming they could increase website traffic using a technique known as "search box optimization".

Essentially, they are claiming they can insert a company name into the autocomplete results on Google.

Clearly, this isn't a legitimate service - however, is it a well known technique?

Despite our recommendation to not move forward with it, the client is still very intrigued.

Here is a video of a similar service:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW2Fz6dy1_A

[KeriMorgret]

It's generally a technique that is prohibited by companies that people hired to do this type of thing. For example, people would put up gigs on Amazon Mechanical Turk, asking people to search for a particular phrase, to help them get into autosuggest.

[EGOL]

Go type "search box optimization".   Nuthin'

So, if these guys don't even have their own queries nailed down then they either are not very good at this or the cost isn't worth it even for them.

Honestly, this isn't going to work for most queries.  The average searcher isn't typing the words in the right order to get YourBusiness added to the end of a query.   And, if you watched in that video they had to type out these big, long, improbable, almost worthless queries (that you would probably own anyhow) just to see the brand name.   To me that was mighty convincing that this is a baloney service.  We were laughing about that here.

[David-Kley]

"So, if these guys don't even have their own queries nailed down then they either are not very good at this or the cost isn't worth it even for them."

Sounds legit. This seems to be a bait and switch service directed at those unfamilar with seo to get them intrigued. Gotta love those pesky seo emails selling dreams every day! We get quite a few of them here. Most go straight to the trash folder. Wonder what they tell the client when it doesnt work and they don't show up in auto suggest? lol