What can you do with the saved time? Google certainly do push the boundaries.
Really it’s quite an interesting development, and if you look at the figures Google has put out below, and start doing some math, you get a picture of just how much dominance Google has as the search engine of choice. The implications for our users will be immense.
There is one drawback as far as I can see. Will users start to miss stuff they might previously seen? If you use that function chances are you will click on the first result that pops up before you even finish typing your search. Will that mean that Google Rankings become even more important to your website?
Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.
The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way
Did you know:
- Before Google Instant, the typical searcher took more than 9 seconds to enter a search term, and we saw many examples of searches that took 30-90 seconds to type.
- Using Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.
- If everyone uses Google Instant globally, we estimate this will save more than 3.5 billion seconds a day. That’s 11 hours saved every second.
- 15 new technologies contribute to Google Instant functionality.
Yay! What I like about this is that it reintroduces the power of serendipity back into finding. You’re exposed to things related to, but not matching, the thing you think you want, just as you are when browsing a shelf. The possible flip side is loss of focus and a booster to procrastinators everywhere, but overall I’m excited by this new approach.