Log into your Google account today and chances are you will experience a completely different Google to the one which you used yesterday. The reason behind this is that Google has just launched what is known as ‘Google Instant,’ a brand new search enhancement which begins to show results as you type, with the idea behind it being that it will allow users to see search results faster than ever before.
Speeding Up Searches
Google have stated that their technical insight was that people type relatively slowly but read a lot faster, taking approximately 300 milliseconds between keystrokes but just 30 milliseconds to glance to another part of the current page they are viewing. Therefore, the thinking behind Google Instant is that now, users will be able to see results as they type.
Benefits To Users
The benefits of Google Instant are likely to be:
- faster searches by predicting search terms and showing results before you finish typing
- smarter predictions to guide searches even when a user is not completely sure what they are looking for
- instant results as soon as a user begins typing
Google’s View
Please take a moment to view the video below which Google released yesterday for more information regarding Google Instant.
Impact Upon SEO?
However, the question many of you are likely to be asking, as opposed to how Google Instant may increase the speed of your searches is how will it impact on your websites SEO?
We can see that when the Google panel were asked this question, they responded “Ranking stays the same. Behaviour and the kind of searches we see may change, however. That’s a longer term effect and we will understand it better over time.”
Obviously it is still early days and Google has assured us that rankings will remain exactly the same when using Google Instant but only time will tell if SEO will need to be slightly adapted to the new service in terms of the keyword research carried out and the developing ways in which users may search in months to come.
I don’t like it and I give it 6 months before they’ve sacked it off. Well, I hope they sack it off anyway. I reckon they’ve done it more for the increasing mobile market. Anything that speeds up queries when you’re using those tiny qwerty keyboards has got to be a good thing but on a PC I’m not into the fact that things are changing away from my eyes focus.
I think it could turn out highly useful…after all anything which speeds up searches at all and gets users to websites quicker is surely a good thing? I totally agree with you on the mobile market too. I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see how it develops and whether or not it is here to stay.