Has Google just undermined long-tail search term SEO?

They have just released the Search-within-a Site feature. For certain search results, Google displays a searchbox within the listing for that site. Their example is a search for “NASA”: The SERP displays the nasa.gov site with an additional searchbox underneath the result to let the user further refine their search within the nasa.gov site.

This may be beneficial for the user because it will allow them to specifically search the NASA site without having to leave Google, but how does this new feature scale? If these mini-searchboxes become a common sight on Google SERPs, what kind of effect will this have on user search behavior? Will users start abandoning the long-tail keywords that more localized, targeted and relevant sites need to “compete”?

I am curious as to how broadly Google’s algorithm will implement this feature. Once per search? (Top result only). Single keyword terms only? Restricted by TLD? (edu/gov/org/etc). I will do some research and see what I can come up with.

Obviously, this isn’t the end of long-tail searches, but these minor “enhancements” may balloon to have huge impact on SEO. Stay tuned…

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