Adwords: How are impressions counted with Google Instant?

One question that assailed many people who advertise with Adwords when Google Instant was launched was the way it would be used to count the impressions of our ads.

This has serious implications, since depending on how impressions are counted, our CTR will vary, which in turn influences various factors such as the Quality Score, cost per click, average position of our ads, etc.

To balance the scales and avoid drastic variations in CTRs, Google Instant counts impressions differently.

The 3 situations in which Google Instant counts impressions are:

1) When a user types a search query and clicks anywhere on the page.

2) The user chooses a specific search by clicking on "Search", pressing "Enter" or choosing one of the "predictions".

3) When the user stops typing and the results are displayed for a minimum of 3 seconds.

Personally I did not suffer any very drastic variation of CTR with Google Instant, perhaps this will become more noticeable with time or with some accounts in particular.

Now that the Google Instant "fever" has passed for a while, what conclusions can you draw about its influence on your campaigns? 😉