by Chukwumah Ezeobika

Created on: September 09, 2010

How do you make an excellent – perhaps perfect – product even better? How do you stay ahead of an ever-improving and determined group of competitors? What do you do to keep yourself from falling victim to the maxim: when you are at the top, the only way to go is down? Google has the answer to all these questions and even more. It is called Google Instant.

Google Instant is the new search feature from Google that predicts results as you type in your search query. It is Google’s way of saying they never want to lose their position atop the search engine rankings. Google Instant was announced on the 8th of September, 2010. At the press conference for its unveiling, Google co-founder Sergey Brin remarked, “I think it’s a little bit of a new dawn in computing”.

Faster Searches and Instant Results: Google Instant will instantly display results as you begin typing into the search box. The results will keep changing with each new character that is typed in. This means that it will try to predict your search results before you finish typing. Users will be able to stop and use the produced search results once they see what they are looking for. There will be no need to press Enter.

Predictive Search: Google Instant will try to predict the user’s entire search query by providing possible matches in a drop-down menu. The top possible prediction will be shown in grayed-out letters inside the search box. You can scroll through the predicted matches and see instant results as each of them is highlighted.

Google anticipates that not everyone will like or enjoy this new feature just like some people do not like the current Google News display. If you do not want to use Google Instant, it can be easily turned off by clicking on the link beside the search box on any search results page. You can also turn it off on the Preferences page.

Google Instant will be introduced in the United States and in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom during the first phase of its launch. Other Google domains will be added later. To be able to use Google Instant from these other domains, you must be signed in to Google with a Google Account. You should also turn on Google Instant. All users need to be running one of the latest updates of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer 8. It will also be launched on mobile.

Google says Google Instant will help people find results faster and in so doing, save as much as 3.5 billion seconds a day. This looks good for Google users but even better for Google. By helping people find results faster, Google hopes this will make them want to carry out even more search queries. More search queries translates into more business for Google.

While recently released search engine rankings such as from Experian Hitwise do not show any changes in Google’s share of the search market, Google is not letting itself get carried away. Google Instant is certainly proof of that. How will Microsoft and Yahoo respond? What can they possibly add to Bing and Yahoo Search to trump Google’s move? This is definitely interesting.

Learn more about Google Instant here.

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