On Wednesday, Google launched Google Instant, a predictive search enhancement that displays results as you type. To celebrate its release, we’ve created a nifty online game: Google Instant Roulette. Try it out! There are still, however, some important unanswered questions: is Google’s latest creation a wonder of web technology or an unwelcome distraction? Can users adapt easily to such a significant interface change in their beloved search engine? How fundamentally will it affect SEO and Search Marketing Practice?
Google are pushing Google Instant primarily as a time saving device. They say “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.” This is an impressive statistic. At Organic Development we’re all in favour of increasing productivity, but not if this increase does anything to negatively affect user experience. When you type a search query in Instant, new results flash up after every letter, which we think has the potential to be somewhat distracting. First because the flashing is somewhat epilepsy-inducing, and second because you may well find yourself delving into irrelevant results brought up by the first couple of letters of your search term.
Others have criticised Instant not in terms of its usability but by suggesting its announcement was anticlimactic. It’s true that instant search, also known as incremental search, is not a new idea; sites such as keyboardr have long been providing a similar service. However, Instant is very different to the services which have preceded it. Our search expert Ross explains: “Since keyboardr is only communicating with its Google API, it’s working from a cache and not from direct data. This effectively means keyboardr doesn’t need to do the heavy-lifting work that Instant needs to do. Instant’s super-quick exchanges of information with data centres makes it an extremely impressive technical feat.”
If this recent Mashable poll is anything to go by, community response to Google Instant is still very much mixed. It seems that users need a bit more time to decide whether or not Instant is a change is for the better.
While you’re deciding for youself, be sure to try your luck on our game!
http://www.googleinstantsearchcasino.com/
Organic Development are members of thebestof Exeter: http://bit.ly/c6DmTj
The following Cookies are used on this Site. Users who allow all the Cookies will enjoy the best experience and all functionality on the Site will be available to you.
You can choose to disable any of the Cookies by un-ticking the box below but if you do so your experience with the Site is likely to be diminished.
In order to interact with this site.
To help us to measure how users interact with content and pages on the Site so we can make
things better.
To show content from Google Maps.
To show content from YouTube.
To show content from Vimeo.
To share content across multiple platforms.
To view and book events.
To show user avatars and twitter feeds.
To show content from TourMkr.
To interact with Facebook.
To show content from WalkInto.