Google Instant Frequently Asked Questions

At this point, there are more questions than answers about Google Instant.

What we know Google Instant does do, as unveiled yesterday, is auto-complete and show results for a popular searches as users type, as opposed to after pressing the “Search” button or enter. For example, if you start typing in “SEO is dead,” Google will automatically begin to predict searches that happen to begin with those letters. If you don’t see the results you want, just keep typing and the results will update automatically.

To better serve our readers, we took a stab at trying to answer many of the questions we saw on Twitter and the millions of articles we read on the subject.

Why don’t I see anything different?

You have a virus.

Just kidding, you need to be patient, says the GOOG.

Google Instant is starting to roll-out to users on Google domains in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia who use the following browsers: Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8.

What does this look like live?

For those who haven’t seen it yet in a live demo, check out Google’s Distinguished Engineer Ben Gomes, one of the masterminds leads on the project:

How does this affect searchers?

According to the presentation, there are three modes in which Google Instant can make your search experience different:

Instant Results — Google Results now dynamically change as you type, typing in a “w” will get you a 5-day forecast in San Francisco, instantly.

Predictions — The search attempts to predict exactly what you want, showing the results that it thinks you want in grey text, allowing you to chose.

Scroll To Search — Using the down arrow key will let you scroll through each of the suggestions, and the results page will update as you go along.

For those who are part of the 65% of Americans using Google, consider this a major upgrade to Google’s auto-suggest feature, which has been around for quite some time. Additionally, expect more local and more personalized results in the instant results depending on your IP address, location, browser and more.

What are the benefits to the end users?

The benefits are obvious: users will save some time. How much time depends on the user and the amount of searches, Instant’s awesomeness claims to save all of us more than 3.5 billion seconds every day, or 11 hours every second.

How will this affect Google Analytics?

Fluctuations are possible, as confirmed by the GA blog:

We expect Google Instant will help users find what they’re looking for faster. With this change, you might notice some fluctuations in AdWords impression volume and in the distribution of organic keywords. For example, you may find that certain keywords receive significantly more or fewer impressions moving forward.

Does this work for every search?

At this point, no. Via Twitter yesterday, there was plenty of anecdotal stories of certain searches (mostly of the not-safe-for-work variety) not auto-completing or showing results unless the user clicked the “Search” key or enter, much like before.

If this doesn’t send you to the Google home page and test out searches, nothing will.

Is Instant a search engine game-changer?

For who? Google already owns Boardwalk and Park Place, plus a couple hotels on each.

Perhaps the question should be, what game is left to play and who else is playing?

How does this affect SEO?

Although the uninformed would like you to believe otherwise, this does not make SEO dead, irrelevant or dark magic. Again.

That is, according to Google’s Matt Cutts:

Q: Does Google Instant kill search engine optimization (SEO)?
A: No! Almost every new change at Google generates the question “Will X kill SEO?”

What it can do is affect search behavior over the long term – as Cutts also discusses – which has been affected every time Google makes an update to the algorithm, the search engine results page layout, adding real time results and the addition of news, video, books, music, etc. in universal search.

In other words, we’ve been here before.

Can I turn it off? P.S. Get off my lawn!

Yes, you can disable Google Instant by going to your Google preferences or just click the “Instant is on” dropdown box.

What do you think of Google Instant?

I find the auto-complete results a tad annoying, but I thought the same of real-time results (and I enjoy them now). Additionally, watching co-workers test Google Instant is the highest of high comedy.

That said, I think the larger story is that Google is doing whatever they can to expose users to as many queries and ads as possible. As well as gather more data on specific searches to further personalize results.

That doesn’t make Google evil, it makes them great at collecting data. Unless of course, someone in Mountain View said this:

(W)e know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are.

Unfortunately, apparently Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt already did.

Happy searches everyone.

Flickr photo courtesy of Majiscup – Drink for Design