12 ms·

Google Instant Search Released

371 points by wlfsbrg 16y ago

paraschopra 16y ago
I keep thinking that Google is on a mission to make us lazy. What after Instant search? Google Mind Reading Search!
- cryptoz 16y ago
  Google is on a mission to build AI. Perhaps a side-effect of that is lazy humans, but that's definitely not their main goal. :)
  - paraschopra 16y ago
    Smart AI + Lazy Humans = Feelings of Hollywood sci-fi being right The smart thing about Google is that their progress is incremental in the sense nobody will realize before it takes over their lives. In a way it already has, but imagine your relationship with Google in 10 years down the line. You will be literally hooked to it and it will know what you are going to do next. I just wish Don't be evil stays ingrained in that AI :)
ladon86 16y ago
One of the main issues for advertisers (as far as I can tell) is that this increases competition for the keywords which Google predicts first, and decreases traffic for the other keywords. This already happened with Google Suggest, but I think that Instant search will result in even more users only interacting with the first suggestion. For example, the term "social networking" will now get far more traffic than "social network", because it appears first. If I wanted to search for "social network", I can't just type it, I have to type it, press down, then press enter. Otherwise, I'm still searching for "social networking". It creates more of a winner-takes-all market in search terms.
- msg 16y ago
  You can also press the Delete key to cut short a search. I would prefer to hit space multiple times and get the same behavior. I tried searching for wtf. It lengthens the term to wtfismygearscore, which appears to be some WoW tool. What I don't like about the tool is that it makes my searches too specific! It doesn't know when to quit and the completion is often longer than I want it to be. Strange.
- ugh 16y ago
  No you don’t. Type “social network” (no quotation marks) and press enter, Google will then search only for what you typed, without the suggestion. It’s not exactly obvious that you can do that but it makes sense. You can use Instant just as you used Google before and still get the same behavior, they seem to have taken great care of making this behave exactly like before (i.e. typing something and pressing enter will only search for exactly what you typed, pressing enter adds an entry to your browser’s history just as before, etc.).
ugh 16y ago
And it doesn’t break the back button! I was a bit worried about that but you can either make a ‘snapshot’ of the current search results by pressing enter or clicking the search button (just like before only without page reload) or by just waiting a short time (about three seconds), presumably so as to not clutter up your browser’s history. It’s a really smooth experience and they seem to have though of everything.
- zach 16y ago
  Managing browser history was the #1, #2, and #3 issue I had to deal with when I was doing a similar project. If you are very careful and clever (I recommend the jQuery history plugin) you can make it work properly, but it's a headache. Google has made it very slick, although they at least have a fallback: "oops, Google Instant won't work on this browser (cough, IE) so here's Google Brewed." If you bill your service as instant search, you need to work with even lame browsers.
JangoSteve 16y ago
This is really cool, though I think I'd have to change my search habits dramatically to really benefit from it. It'd probably be better suited for people who don't know exactly what they're searching for. Then again, I wonder if it would just confuse them further.
- acqq 16y ago
  Correct: there's real chance I'll forget what I wanted to search if I'm presented with something else shiny before! It's dangerous and it will mostly make popular searches even more popular. It's a positive feedback loop, often a bad thing.
- nanairo 16y ago
  It sounds like it would be confusing... but they let you switch it off, so all the best to them.
  - jlees 16y ago
    The other angle is: most of the time I use the omnibox etc to search, so I don't interact with Instant at all, but having it there on google.com for the few times I am searching for something more complex (misremembered song lyrics are a favourite of mine) is also useful.
    - nanairo 16y ago
      True. I guess it depends on your working pattern. Personally I start with the browser's search field, but then (dunno why) if I need to make some changes I do it in google page itself (about 50% of the time, I'd estimate). So I think It will just annoy me to have Google try to give me results a fraction of a second earlier like an overly keen student: I personally don't feel the need and instead I feel it will disrupt my thought flow. That said, I am not criticising Google. I think it's one impressive piece of technology and much kudos to succeed. And as you pointed out there will be many people out there who will be able to add this to their searching procedures, and for the rest of us we can always disable it. It's win-win. :)
RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
Multiple submissions on the same subject: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672391 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672391 <- This one http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672388 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672388 <- This is an explanation http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672346 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672346 <- First
acqq 16y ago
The shortest link to the explanation, for those of us who don't have javascript turned on by default and want to read about it, or who don't see the new interface: http://www.google.com/instant/ http://www.google.com/instant/ "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."
acqq 16y ago
Try typing "fuc" -- it's smart enough not to be instant :)
- JangoSteve 16y ago
  Aww, but I really wanted to search for "fuchsia plants".
- davidw 16y ago
  Works with some swear words in Italian too. Wonder if they compiled a list or if they've got an algorithm that says "wait, this is about to return some naughty results".
  - sz 16y ago
    It's [edit: not exactly] SafeSearch: Q: If an offensive or lewd word is a fraction of my query, will Google push these results in front of me as I type? A: As always, we provide options to filter the content you see in search. You can choose to set SafeSearch to filter out explicit content, and parents can lock SafeSearch to the strict setting. In addition, autocomplete excludes certain terms related to pornography, violence and hate speech.
    - acqq 16y ago
      AFAIK not SafeSearch but "in addition," the second part of your qute.
      - ugh 16y ago
        You basically have to press enter if you want to search for a term with possible pornographic, violent or hateful content (that’s what they just said in their Q&A). That seems like a sensible solution to me. Safe Search doesn’t figure into it.
        sz 16y ago
        They probably do something like: if a search term returns a high density of SafeSearch-flagged top results, then don't autocomplete.
BTBurke 16y ago
So how long before we can buy our way to the top of the search term suggestions? What kind of analytics can you do about how streaming search changes the way people compose their keywords? It's an interesting new feature.
- JangoSteve 16y ago
  I actually wrote a post a while back about Google's search term suggestions [1]. Most interesting fact I found was that Facebook actually has one of the top-ten suggestions for the letter "w" because of people entering "www.facebook.com" into Google so often. [1] http://www.alfajango.com/blog/google-one-letter-suggestions/ http://www.alfajango.com/blog/google-one-letter-suggestions/
sp332 16y ago
what does "?sclient=psy" mean?
- pfarrell 16y ago
  I'm going to guess it means "psychic mode" which they just made a joke about in the presentation. "It's not psychic, but it's clever".
  - sumeetjain 16y ago
    The internal codename for this project at Google was "Psychic Search".
rjett 16y ago
They're talking about it live right now http://www.youtube.com/google http://www.youtube.com/google
davidu 16y ago
I'm really curious how they will count ad impressions in this new system. Can anyone find any comments on that? Google is CPC, but the number of impressions has a dramatic impact on price.
- arfrank 16y ago
  http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=187309 http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38... Excerpt: When someone searches using Google Instant, ad impressions are counted in these situations: * The user begins to type a query on Google and clicks anywhere on the page (a search result, an ad, a spell correction, a related search). * The user chooses a particular query by clicking the Search button, pressing Enter, or selecting one of the predicted queries. * The user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of three seconds.
  - itblarg 16y ago
    Three seconds? Yikes. Will be interesting to see how this impacts big money PPC spenders...
    - guyzero 16y ago
      By definition it won't affect PPC spenders at all unless someone clicks on the ad. You can only buy CPM ads on the AdSense network.
      - itblarg 16y ago
        It has the potential to drastically alter search, which thus would drastically alter PPC. The likeliest negative outcome is the gradual disappearance of any traffic driven from long-tail search keywords.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - slowpoison 16y ago
rubyrescue 16y ago
Not sure if this was covered elsewhere, but this actually changes the SEO game in a subtle way. imagine you could rank for the term online deg but NOT online degree. SEO's rejoice, this could be profitable for consultants and linkbuilders.
- brown9-2 16y ago
  I'm curious if users will actually change their behavior because of this though. For example, if you decide you want to go to google.com to search for "online degree", are you likely going to stop in the middle of typing your phrase when you notice some results appear? For me the lag between typing and displaying of results seems a little too slow for this to really happen.
  - eof 16y ago
    You forget that you are not the user. edit: ie not everyone is typing as quickly as you are
  - alextgordon 16y ago
    Sure, if you can touch type. There's still millions of people hunting and pecking, especially on mobile devices. It's certainly plausible that people will stop to look at the results.
  - stellar678 16y ago
    One of the articles I read talked about Google mentioning this....their research showed an average pause of 300ms between keystrokes (crazy!) but only 30ms between eye saccades, so users are looking around 10 times for every keystroke.
    - CamperBob 16y ago
      If I'm hunting and pecking, I'm looking at the keyboard, not the screen. Those saccades are most likely happening during the typist's search for the next key to hit.
- 16y ago
shimonamit 16y ago
Why would I want Google to begin searching at 'he' if I'm looking for 'hello world'? Will the instant search list relevant results so early on, so as to save me from typing the whole term?
- lhnz 16y ago
  Solution: type faster or downgrade your internet connection. ;)
- DougBTX 16y ago
  "he" brings up results for "heart" for me. "hello w" brings up "hello world" results.
- jlees 16y ago
  It doesn't search for 'he', it searches for the first autocomplete from 'he' - which happens to be Hertz, oh well.
  - shimonamit 16y ago
    Thanks. I should have known they were smarter than that.
pbhjpbhj 16y ago
Looks like "q" is the starting letter for your project name if your punting for it to be the next big thing.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  * you're
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
rubypay 16y ago
The instant results seem to be served from memory rather than an actual search being performed. For example, try searching for: zqqx and after the 'x' is typed, no instant results appear. However, Pressing 'enter' to submit your search will show you the full results. A new Google game: what's the shortest non-blacklisted key sequence that returns 0 instant results.
- ugh 16y ago
  It looks like zqqx is (for whatever reason) one of the words for which instant search is disabled. Try the four letter word starting with f, you will see exactly the same thing.
eof 16y ago
kind of cool, but I immediately turned mine off. I could imagine using it in some situations though, when I am really digging for some information and not expecting my query to bring my desired result to the top few spots.
paraschopra 16y ago
From their FAQ page http://www.google.com/instant/ http://www.google.com/instant/ * 15 new technologies contribute to Google Instant functionality. Does anyone know which are these new technologies?
- jsdalton 16y ago
  http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=673630 http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=673630 (I apologize profusely, I just couldn't resist.)
ArturSoler 16y ago
Will some integration be done for those of us that search on the Chrome navigation bar instead of opening google.com in the first place?
- ugh 16y ago
  From the Q&A: That will be out in a few months. They are working on it.
coderrr 16y ago
interesting UI issue/inconsistency (in Chrome)... when pressing tab, it can either complete the current word/phrase or move to the X, so <enter> can either do nothing or clear the search box
res0nat0r 16y ago
I for one turn off google suggestions on every new pc/browser I use, it is a distraction to me and actually causes me to type slower. Maybe because I've been in front of a computer constantly for 15 years but I can type my term much faster than being distracted by results and clicking on the dropdown for them. I just wish I could disable this account wide so every time I clean my cookies/cache in Firefox I don't have to go back to preferences and turn it off again.
- swah 16y ago
  OTOH, with this feature sometimes you are going to change what you're searching before finishing it, because you can already see you're going the wrong way. Also, it has tab-complete.
silvertab 16y ago
Well, it's impressively fast, however, I'm not sure I will ever get to use it considering I do most of my search from the Google Chrome Omnibox and very rarely visit the actual google homepage...
- Shakattack 16y ago
  Exactly what I thought. It's a great feature, but just going to google.com takes up time. Maybe future integration into Chrome?
  - jlees 16y ago
    It's a UI challenge, but as Techcrunch reports, this may well be in browsers at some point.
josefresco 16y ago
My question is how will this and previous auto-complete moves by Google effect the "long tail" search market. Will this reduce the number of truly unique queries and instead group people into already existing term categories? I know auto complete has been in effect for a while, but I wonder if this will only make it even more effective, thereby changing user behavior and simply re-enforcing the already existing terms.
zzzmarcus 16y ago
Strangely, it's not working yet for me in Chrome (dev channel) but it works in Safari 5.
- yannk 16y ago
  yes, similar here. Safari 5 & Chrome don't have it enabled. Firefox does. I thought it was related to the use of encrypted.google.com or customized search, but it doesn't seem like it. At least not directly (and incognito mode doesn't help). And I don't want to clear my google cookies which might solve the problem.
CWIZO 16y ago
This would be awesome on image search.
wesley 16y ago
So, does the referrer still include the keyword phrase used?
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
davidwparker 16y ago
Interesting, but it doesn't work on Personalized Google (google IG), so I probably won't be using it.
nailer 16y ago
Could you please link to the actual announcement, not the front page of Google? Google release their products incrementally, so not everyone has access to new features at the same time. There's others in the thread who also don't have this in their locale yet and are also reduced to guessing.
- ashishbharthi 16y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672461 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672461
pbw 16y ago
This is a logical extension of the trend to do ever more computation on every key press. Think spelling correction and auto-complete. But here instead of just a local process every key press invokes hundreds of remote machines, required to assemble a single search results page. It's impressive and decadant to think your cat walking accross the keyboard can light up whole racks of remote machines.
- coliveira 16y ago
  > every key press invokes hundreds of remote machines, Not really. Apparently Google has an improved cache system for the most common keywords. The pre-computed results come from just one machine.
  - eru 16y ago
    Yes, but your cat won't hit pre-computed results.
  - EricBurnett 16y ago
    Not really. Personalization, location, etc. affect a lot. I can't find the page I was reading, but it appears that in just running through all the first letters and seeing what is suggested (a is for...) some users are seeing personalized results. And if personalizations are showing up right from character 1, caching results can't really play a big role. Not at the user level anyways; results can certainly be cached further back, but multiple computers will be used just to decide if you deserve personalizations.
    - ithkuil 16y ago
      The fact that you see location and personalization affects the search result doesn't actually mean that they perform a real search using the query that you are actually writing in your search bar. One possible way (I'm not sure exactly how it works at google, but I can guess) is that the search result is computed in many steps, one of which searches the indices and generates a list of relevant results, which then are passed to a personalization layer which modifies (reorders, merges, trims) the index results and finally it's passed to a presentation layer which renders the html page (perhaps there are other layers too, irrelevant for this discussion). So, the "instant" search would basically replace first layer, the actual search in the big indices with a precomputed search list for each phrase generated by search suggestions (or a cache of these, which is filled by actual searches if the element is not present). The personalization layer would be free to do things to that precomputed search results, incurring into smaller load because of several reasons: a) fewer users have personalization and on fewer b) personalization has to access less data, and the whole search retrieve functionality is more IO bound than cpu bound. As for location, there could be one of these 'caches' per location. I'm sure that they don't do any query "as you type" because the 'instant' page result is always the result of the first "search suggestion". Try to type "F#" (as user 'singular' suggested), the first suggestion is "f to c", and the search results are about temperature conversion.
jacquesm 16y ago
Just 'w' will give weather, but with an extra 'w' ww will give 'facebook.com' as the first result, that's interesting.
- frou_dh 16y ago
  When I used Chrome, typing w in the location bar gave www.facebook.com as the first choice (no local cache). I'm sure it deserves to be there but that's a bit icky if you have no interest in it ;-)
- BonesLF 16y ago
  Not that strange considering it is the most popular site on the internet next to google.com. If it's trying to predict your destination this is correct a staggeringly large percent of the time. Of course "your" implies the masses. They use Google like we would use the address bar. As someone touched on above with longtails, the real interesting bit will be to see what the Google keyword tool says about search terms next month(or maybe the month after that). We'll have to see if longtails have fallen off the face of the Earth or not. Maybe the autosuggest will still have a major impact vs. what they see in the SERPs below as they are typing. Edit: I got Walmart as the first result for 'w'. Could be a location-based decision engine potentially. Fuckin rednecks
  - gcampbell 16y ago
    It's almost certainly location based - the first result I see for "b" is "bart", which I imagine only applies if you live in the Bay Area (for those unfamiliar: http://www.bart.gov/ http://www.bart.gov/ )
exit 16y ago
am i overlooking something, or is there no way to use the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button now?
- Skroob 16y ago
  If you hover over a result in the suggestion list, there's an I'm Feeling Lucky option on the right. Did people ever really use that for anything besides google bomb jokes though?
  - barmstrong 16y ago
    Heard Marissa Mayer say one time that while people don't use it they like the fact it's there (let's them know Google is fun and has a sense of humor).
- felideon 16y ago
  It shows up when you hover over the suggestions.
- mr_b 16y ago
  You can use the right arrow for 'I'm feeling Lucky'.
kordless 16y ago
This is a total ripoff of keyboardr.com.
- moultano 16y ago
  Keyboardr just searches for the letters you've already typed in, not the words it thinks you will type.
- zach 16y ago
  Or you could say it's a ripoff of zippily.com which I did four years ago over the weekend after Google released their Ajax Search API. Except that live search was already something that was happening on lots of sites back then. By now it's hard to see that instant searching is even novel, much less a ripoff of any other interface. Google putting their completion together with their instant search (an opportunity not available to API users, of course) is pretty neat, though.
orblivion 16y ago
Do we really need this? Isn't the time it takes to finish a query the last problem on our hands? Or am I just a spoiled fast typer?
- barmstrong 16y ago
  Wasn't Outlook good enough? Did we really need faster search in Gmail? This is gonna be one of those things you didn't know you needed till you got used to it, then you'll look back and wonder how you ever lived without it.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - orblivion 16y ago
    Well waiting for your computer to respond can be really frustrating. Having to finish typing something isn't so bad. For me anyway. So it'll help, but for such a huge infrastructure overhaul, is it really worth it?
- orangecat 16y ago
  We don't "need" it, but taking Google's stats at face value for the moment, it will save 350 million hours per year. That's not insignificant.
  - izendejas 16y ago
    Yea, but at what cost? Are they using more power? I would think so as they not only auto-complete, but also generate countless search results in rapid-fire mode. For every query, how many more sets of results are returned? On average, it's easily more than one. It's only one when they predict your query.
    - pjscott 16y ago
      If people like this and it makes search more server-intensive to run, that works in Google's favor by making it more expensive to compete with them on instant search. They're the champions when it comes to infrastructure, and they know it.
chintan 16y ago
Auto-complete/Tab complete is priceless! Feels like I'm using Vim on google.com. Thank You!
crux 16y ago
Speaking from a UI standpoint, I find the leap of the bar from the middle to the top of the screen to be very disorienting. I know that the middle-of-the-page input field is a real visual trademark for Google, but if they want to push this feature, they might have to move the box up to where it is currently leaping.
- Shakattack 16y ago
  Agreed, even some smooth movement would make a difference - the jump is very sudden
- ugh 16y ago
  You would have to test it but I think some sort of non-distracting animation could help (a quick fade-out and fade-in maybe – even if it’s only a few milliseconds long). Actually moving the search bar up with an animation would most certainly either take too long or be so fast as to be equally or even more jarring.
- desigooner 16y ago
  IMO, this change is a little distracting and annoying as far as my searches go. Putting that aside, a question that arises is how will this affect the user in terms of accessibility and screenreaders.. usually autofocusing to fields is not encouraged as far as accessibility is concerned.
- Sephr 16y ago
  Maybe moving the search bar as soon as you focus it may be an adequate compromise.
- sukuriant 16y ago
  I would prefer it if, when Google is in "instant" mode, the search bar is automatically on the top. Either that, or perhaps the search could just be shown at the bottom. That said, the "jump" to the top is enough for me to disable the instant search. I've wanted to go back to it because it seems like a great idea, but that teleport to the top keeps confusing me, and those seconds of re-orientation negate the enhancements they intended to provide. This is my opinion based on my experience with it so far, of course.
mrshoe 16y ago
I'm sorry, but this is a solution to the wrong problem. I switched from AltaVista to Google back in 1998, not because their search engine returned results more quickly, but because their results were much more relevant. In the past few years, SEOs have set up micro-sites on just about any topic I could possibly search for and they've managed to rank highly for those topics. Am I the only one who's sick of being taken to these shallow landing pages smothered in ads? Does anyone else think Google's search results are now far less relevant than they were 5 years ago? I don't need search results that update live as I type. I need to find what I'm looking for.
- AlexC04 16y ago
  You've really hit the nail right on the head for exactly what I've been feeling some sort of odd, decentralized anxiety about for a while. While reading your comment I realized that was the problem. Google kinda sucks now because of people gaming the system. But who else is out there? I'd probably switch my search if I knew where else to try.
  - laktek 16y ago
    Maybe to duckduckgo.com ?
    - AlexC04 16y ago
      i'll try it for a week and see how it feels. :)
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - josefresco 16y ago
    Use Bing, or DDG. A healthy search market means SEO companies have to target two (or more, go DDG!) set of somewhat unique rules which makes it harder to game. The fact that Google dominates means there's one playbook for most SEO. Bing (or anyone) could really make some ground if they tackled the low quality content SPAM market as opposed to simply trying to be as close to Google as possible so people will switch. How about some direct ads showing spammy searches at Google compared with clean results at ....
peterbe 16y ago
That is genuinely impressive. Never seen anything like it before on any other website. Not sure it's needed now with the great autocomplete but it sure looks really great.
- chaosmachine 16y ago
  I built something like it a few years ago: http://drupalmodules.com/module-finder http://drupalmodules.com/module-finder No autocomplete, though.
  - larsberg 16y ago
    As did I, back in mid-2003. Of course, it was just an excuse to try out the then-new "Google Web APIs" :-) http://lars.com/tools/IncGoogleSearch/inc-google-search.jpg http://lars.com/tools/IncGoogleSearch/inc-google-search.jpg
awa 16y ago
Bing Instant? : http://www.istartedsomething.com/livesearch/ http://www.istartedsomething.com/livesearch/
jcl 16y ago
This change has the brilliant side-effect of coaxing users to give more specific descriptions of what they are searching for. Before instant search, a search term was sufficient if it brought up the desired result in the first page or two, but now users will continue typing until the page they are looking for appears in the first two or three results. Google could (for example) use this info to come up with better descriptions for subsets of ambiguous searches, improving the relevance of search suggestions.
btilly 16y ago
My opinion is that this is a challenge to Microsoft. "So you want to compete in search, well match this! See whether your server infrastructure can hold up!" Having used the feature for a while, what I've found is that I basically don't finish typing. I just stop when I have good enough results. At first I found it annoying, but after I got used to it I found it very nice. Now I find myself annoyed that it isn't built into chrome's search bar.
- Brashman 16y ago
  The fact that it's not built into Chrome's search bar means that I will never see it after the 5 minutes I just spent playing with it. I've been searching from my browser, whether Chrome or Firefox, for a long time now.
  - nkohari 16y ago
    It's just an asynchronous load of data, so I don't see why Chrome couldn't leverage it as well. Might lead to some interesting UI, actually.
  - btilly 16y ago
    How long do you think it will be until there are plugins giving you the same feature in Firefox and Chrome?
    - phjohnst 16y ago
      Marissa Mayer apparently said: "Sometime in the next few months this is something that will be activated in the browsers" via: http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/08/google-instant-chrome/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/08/google-instant-chrome/
- contextfree 16y ago
  Someone actually built a Bing-based instant search a while back: http://www.istartedsomething.com/livesearch/ http://www.istartedsomething.com/livesearch/ It's not nearly as responsive, dunno to what extent that's imposed by MSFT's server infrastructure though.
mtholking 16y ago
Is Auto-Complete Optimization something SEOs already focus on? For example, trying to get the keywords they rank well on placed relatively higher in an auto-complete list for Google, Bing, etc?
- ambiate 16y ago
  Typically, no. Let us say you have a keyword like 'patio umbrella' to toy with. You've purchased the domain patioumbrella.com and already gained a huge one up in the SEO rankings for Google's algorithm. What's next in line? Creating original content that Google thinks associate with that keyword. Emphasis on "what Google thinks" because Google believes if you're ranking for a keyword, you should be ranking for related keywords. [re: GKT synonyms] So, in the keyword tool, I search 'patio umbrella' and generate synonyms. I see things like "patio cushions", "wicker patio furniture", etc. Google would give me more rank value if I also created content for these keywords. Lets say patio umbrella (lights|stand|base) show up in autocomplete (which they do). If I try to rank for all of these keywords, most of which aren't related to my root keyword, Google will be confused as to what my site is actually about. (This is my understanding and my experience)
joey_bananas 16y ago
Annoyingly busy. I sort of feel like this is a prime example why you don't put engineers in charge of UI. Just because we can is not a good enough reason to do it. Also, having both a dropdown and a whole page refresh, what?
- pjscott 16y ago
  It feels less busy after you've used it for a little while, and your brain has had the chance to adjust to having most of the page change whenever you type something.
alexandros 16y ago
I think this is Google's way of training the average user to search like a pro. Many people don't understand that sometimes it takes multiple queries to find what you need. This seems like an extremely effective way to communicate that and encourage users to fiddle with their queries.
coliveira 16y ago
This change may be helpful for users, but will be even more for Google advertisement programs. Basically, they can show more advertisements for each user visit. For example: user starts typing a long tail keyword search and an unrelated result is displayed. Even though the user was not looking for that specific keyword combination, he will see the results (and the ads) for that keyword.
bambax 16y ago
I often use Google to search for very specific phrases -- error messages, for example, in quotes -- and that doesn't help. It actually hurts. What hurts even more is that Google returns documents that don't contain all the search terms, but where the missing search terms can be found in incoming links (or so it says). If you try to use the allintext: parameter you're almost always considered a bot (why??!?) and your queries get delayed or you're shown an indecipherable captcha (they're getting harder, or maybe I actually am a bot, because nowadays I fail to solve every other one). It seems Google is aiming at some lower common denominator of the general public, someone who can't spell, can't type, can't be bothered to learn a basic search syntax and just wants to know where to buy the latest gadget. There is a space to be filled for a "Google for grownups".
- moultano 16y ago
  This isn't a great solution, but prepend words that aren't showing up with a + sign to enforce that they appear on the document.
jules 16y ago
I love it. This makes it much quicker to edit and tune your query to get what you want.
danielnicollet 16y ago
I work at a company where we have been doing this sort of stuff for a while now. It's very impressive in the case of Google because of the size of its index and the level of error tolerance of the matching sequence used. I wonder how complete these instant results are compared to the now lame old click-to-submit search results? I tried to test and noticed the count of instant results is slightly smaller but the top items appear to be the same most of the time. Anyone has insights?
- origoterra 16y ago
  Well speed is nice but I sure don't want to loose quality of search results for that. Google is fast enough as it is. I would say that it's probably unfeasible to process a query over the full web index so there some amount of corner cutting going on here. What type?
bherms 16y ago
I don't really see the benefit here. I understand it may save 2-5 seconds per search, but it's not as if though those 2-5 seconds are improving my experience any. Assuming the time saved was important, they should've just implemented an AJAX search instead: type, press enter, dynamic load without page refresh. That's the real time killer. Having the results change while I'm typing is actually kind of annoying.
hanibash 16y ago
In my opinion, this is the same kind of Google-think that brought about Google Wave. It's extremely impressive, no doubt, but it doesn't seem like something users were clamoring for. Just as Google will learn a lot from Google Wave despite its low usability, so will it learn a lot from this, whether users really want or use it or not. Only time will tell if Google's engineering-centric culture will ultimately win for it in the end. Its been all wins so far, hasn't it?
dualboot 16y ago
I hate this and thought I'd bumped something this morning when I discovered this "feature" accidentally. Really distracting the jarring transition.
vaksel 16y ago
I think this little change is going to fundamentally change the internet landscape. a) no more long tail keywords. those people will see an answer before they get to the part of the phrase that makes it longtail(so if you ranked for that 5 term keyword...too bad). i.e. if you rank for "best auto insurance companies", you've now lost all your business to those who rank for "best auto insurance" b) much faster searching for users = less traffic for you. If you are below the fold...chances are that you are screwed. Why bother reading below the #5 result...if I can just add a few more keywords to narrow my search? Basically the scrolling is going to take me longer, than it is to adjust my search phrase. c) much more focus on auto-complete. Before you'd see some auto-complete strings, that would show only 2-3 hits a month according to Google. But now this same string might get a few thousand, just because people are automatically shown those results. Overall I find that it's good for users, good for high ranking websites, and bad for everyone else. This is going to make the SEO thing much more competitive, since it essentially eliminates the long tail.
- VMG 16y ago
  a) was also the case previously a) and b) contradict each other
  - vaksel 16y ago
    a) no...results didn't load automatically. Now as you type you see the results right away. b) no they don't..,A = natural long tail search, where the person starts off with a long tail string. B = the recurring searches trying to find something
- ojbyrne 16y ago
  For me (and I'll admit it perhaps doesn't apply to others), it has almost no effect. I use the firefox search box mostly.
  - vaksel 16y ago
    same, but search box is only good for your first search
evanjacobs 16y ago
I wonder if this will cause average users to begin understanding and using the "tab complete" interaction. That could open up interesting uses in all kinds of apps.
pg1 16y ago
I think saving time sales point is the biggest bullshit from G. Google should be more honest to there users. They should tell us that they need more page impressions+ads.
jhuckestein 16y ago
I'd really like to use the arrow keys to navigate the results instead of the suggestions.
pedrokost 16y ago
Google Instant will make Google's Web History less useful (if it was of any use before) and easier to trick, since the History records only if you actually press Enter after the query or if you click a results. However a lot of information can be revealed from the description of the results that Google offers and so people won't always have to click Search to get the info they required.
- ugh 16y ago
  It also remembers when you were looking at search results for more than three seconds (it will even distinguish between normal searches and those three-second things). Unless you can be done in less than three seconds you cannot trick Web History.
  - xiongchiamiov 16y ago
    With link-hinting, it's quite possible to be off the page in under 3 seconds. Of course, the percentage of Google users who use link-hinting is... very small.
fnazeeri 16y ago
Well that was interesting. I started migrating my blog from TypePad to WordPress last week and it's been "down" or intermittent since then. What's amazing is that Google has erased 5 years of really highly ranked search results. For example I had the #1 or #2 result for "liquidation preference" and now it's nowhere to be seen. I wonder if the "real time" will turn Google into Twitter...sad if true.
- xiongchiamiov 16y ago
  If your site has been down recently, then that's what removed it from search results, not Google Instant.
jlft 16y ago
This looks more like a "labs" feature than a real improvement. Doesn't add any value to me... glad they allow us to disabled it.
nhebb 16y ago
<smartass>I like the way it instantly changes my C# queries to C in the suggest list.</smartass>
hotmind 16y ago
Instead of writing a lengthy comment on HN, I wrote a blog post: 9 Ways SEO Can "Best" Google Instant: http://goo.gl/ez2a http://goo.gl/ez2a It's a spicy title I'll admit, and guaranteed to raise the ire of some HN folk, but that was not my intension.
Pistos2 16y ago
This doesn't work at all for me in Opera. Has anyone else had success in Opera? edit: Apparently Opera is not among the browsers listed here: http://www.google.com/instant/ http://www.google.com/instant/
- r4ps 16y ago
  It does work, you just need to mask as Firefox: http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2010/09/08/google-instant http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2010/09/08/google-instant
typedef_void 16y ago
Anyone else find the constantly refreshing search results annoying? If so, do you know of any cognitive psychology literature to explain why? I personally find this instant search infuriating and just want my standard old Google search back, where things do NOT change unless I'm mentally prepared for them to change.
mhidalgo 16y ago
This is pretty mentally jaring, I realized how much searching is a process that I had practiced in certain way for long time. In a couple minutes playing with it , I found myself figuring out how to search for something again. I know there are objections to the UI, or whether it actually improves the search results, or whether the speed increase is worth it but just from a mental perspective it has made me realize how the act of searching is wired into my thought process.
sashthebash 16y ago
The real question is... will this increase or decrease Google's revenue through Adwords on the result pages? They will for sure show more ads, maybe making chances higher for a user to click an ad, but at least for me, after trying it out a bit, it seems like I focus more on the results themselves when typing, as they change all the time, without giving attention to the ads. And as already mentioned, long tail searches might be used less often, so you cannot buy cheap uncompetitive ads to drive traffic to your site, you have to use the big keywords that are suggested.
singular 16y ago
Try typing 'F#', the instant results are irrelevant to F# the language (probably due to the # symbol), but when you click search they become relevant. I would prefer it to be consistent :)
- ithkuil 16y ago
  This happens because the "instant" search results are basically precomputed search results of the "first suggestion". When you type "F#" google search is actually suggesting you "f to c" and the results is displayed accordingly. It seems that google is not simply executing the partial search as you type (it would be too expensive even for them) See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1674707 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1674707
ssn 16y ago
Google Instant Search is just too distracting.
utefan001 16y ago
Does anyone know of a firefox plugin that will allow us to blacklist sites we don't want to see in our google search results?

371 points by wlfsbrg 16y ago

paraschopra 16y ago

I keep thinking that Google is on a mission to make us lazy. What after Instant search? Google Mind Reading Search!

cryptoz 16y ago
Google is on a mission to build AI. Perhaps a side-effect of that is lazy humans, but that's definitely not their main goal. :)
- paraschopra 16y ago
  Smart AI + Lazy Humans = Feelings of Hollywood sci-fi being right The smart thing about Google is that their progress is incremental in the sense nobody will realize before it takes over their lives. In a way it already has, but imagine your relationship with Google in 10 years down the line. You will be literally hooked to it and it will know what you are going to do next. I just wish Don't be evil stays ingrained in that AI :)

ladon86 16y ago

One of the main issues for advertisers (as far as I can tell) is that this increases competition for the keywords which Google predicts first, and decreases traffic for the other keywords. This already happened with Google Suggest, but I think that Instant search will result in even more users only interacting with the first suggestion. For example, the term "social networking" will now get far more traffic than "social network", because it appears first. If I wanted to search for "social network", I can't just type it, I have to type it, press down, then press enter. Otherwise, I'm still searching for "social networking". It creates more of a winner-takes-all market in search terms.

msg 16y ago
You can also press the Delete key to cut short a search. I would prefer to hit space multiple times and get the same behavior. I tried searching for wtf. It lengthens the term to wtfismygearscore, which appears to be some WoW tool. What I don't like about the tool is that it makes my searches too specific! It doesn't know when to quit and the completion is often longer than I want it to be. Strange.
ugh 16y ago
No you don’t. Type “social network” (no quotation marks) and press enter, Google will then search only for what you typed, without the suggestion. It’s not exactly obvious that you can do that but it makes sense. You can use Instant just as you used Google before and still get the same behavior, they seem to have taken great care of making this behave exactly like before (i.e. typing something and pressing enter will only search for exactly what you typed, pressing enter adds an entry to your browser’s history just as before, etc.).

ugh 16y ago

And it doesn’t break the back button! I was a bit worried about that but you can either make a ‘snapshot’ of the current search results by pressing enter or clicking the search button (just like before only without page reload) or by just waiting a short time (about three seconds), presumably so as to not clutter up your browser’s history. It’s a really smooth experience and they seem to have though of everything.

zach 16y ago
Managing browser history was the #1, #2, and #3 issue I had to deal with when I was doing a similar project. If you are very careful and clever (I recommend the jQuery history plugin) you can make it work properly, but it's a headache. Google has made it very slick, although they at least have a fallback: "oops, Google Instant won't work on this browser (cough, IE) so here's Google Brewed." If you bill your service as instant search, you need to work with even lame browsers.

JangoSteve 16y ago

This is really cool, though I think I'd have to change my search habits dramatically to really benefit from it. It'd probably be better suited for people who don't know exactly what they're searching for. Then again, I wonder if it would just confuse them further.

acqq 16y ago
Correct: there's real chance I'll forget what I wanted to search if I'm presented with something else shiny before! It's dangerous and it will mostly make popular searches even more popular. It's a positive feedback loop, often a bad thing.
nanairo 16y ago
It sounds like it would be confusing... but they let you switch it off, so all the best to them.
- jlees 16y ago
  The other angle is: most of the time I use the omnibox etc to search, so I don't interact with Instant at all, but having it there on google.com for the few times I am searching for something more complex (misremembered song lyrics are a favourite of mine) is also useful.
  - nanairo 16y ago
    True. I guess it depends on your working pattern. Personally I start with the browser's search field, but then (dunno why) if I need to make some changes I do it in google page itself (about 50% of the time, I'd estimate). So I think It will just annoy me to have Google try to give me results a fraction of a second earlier like an overly keen student: I personally don't feel the need and instead I feel it will disrupt my thought flow. That said, I am not criticising Google. I think it's one impressive piece of technology and much kudos to succeed. And as you pointed out there will be many people out there who will be able to add this to their searching procedures, and for the rest of us we can always disable it. It's win-win. :)

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago

Multiple submissions on the same subject: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672391 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672391 <- This one http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672388 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672388 <- This is an explanation http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672346 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672346 <- First

acqq 16y ago

The shortest link to the explanation, for those of us who don't have javascript turned on by default and want to read about it, or who don't see the new interface: http://www.google.com/instant/ http://www.google.com/instant/ "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."

acqq 16y ago

Try typing "fuc" -- it's smart enough not to be instant :)

JangoSteve 16y ago
Aww, but I really wanted to search for "fuchsia plants".
davidw 16y ago
Works with some swear words in Italian too. Wonder if they compiled a list or if they've got an algorithm that says "wait, this is about to return some naughty results".
- sz 16y ago
  It's [edit: not exactly] SafeSearch: Q: If an offensive or lewd word is a fraction of my query, will Google push these results in front of me as I type? A: As always, we provide options to filter the content you see in search. You can choose to set SafeSearch to filter out explicit content, and parents can lock SafeSearch to the strict setting. In addition, autocomplete excludes certain terms related to pornography, violence and hate speech.
  - acqq 16y ago
    AFAIK not SafeSearch but "in addition," the second part of your qute.
    - ugh 16y ago
      You basically have to press enter if you want to search for a term with possible pornographic, violent or hateful content (that’s what they just said in their Q&A). That seems like a sensible solution to me. Safe Search doesn’t figure into it.
      - sz 16y ago
        They probably do something like: if a search term returns a high density of SafeSearch-flagged top results, then don't autocomplete.

BTBurke 16y ago

So how long before we can buy our way to the top of the search term suggestions? What kind of analytics can you do about how streaming search changes the way people compose their keywords? It's an interesting new feature.

JangoSteve 16y ago
I actually wrote a post a while back about Google's search term suggestions [1]. Most interesting fact I found was that Facebook actually has one of the top-ten suggestions for the letter "w" because of people entering "www.facebook.com" into Google so often. [1] http://www.alfajango.com/blog/google-one-letter-suggestions/ http://www.alfajango.com/blog/google-one-letter-suggestions/

sp332 16y ago

what does "?sclient=psy" mean?

pfarrell 16y ago
I'm going to guess it means "psychic mode" which they just made a joke about in the presentation. "It's not psychic, but it's clever".
- sumeetjain 16y ago
  The internal codename for this project at Google was "Psychic Search".

rjett 16y ago

They're talking about it live right now http://www.youtube.com/google http://www.youtube.com/google

davidu 16y ago

I'm really curious how they will count ad impressions in this new system. Can anyone find any comments on that? Google is CPC, but the number of impressions has a dramatic impact on price.

arfrank 16y ago
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=187309 http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38... Excerpt: When someone searches using Google Instant, ad impressions are counted in these situations: * The user begins to type a query on Google and clicks anywhere on the page (a search result, an ad, a spell correction, a related search). * The user chooses a particular query by clicking the Search button, pressing Enter, or selecting one of the predicted queries. * The user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of three seconds.
- itblarg 16y ago
  Three seconds? Yikes. Will be interesting to see how this impacts big money PPC spenders...
  - guyzero 16y ago
    By definition it won't affect PPC spenders at all unless someone clicks on the ad. You can only buy CPM ads on the AdSense network.
    - itblarg 16y ago
      It has the potential to drastically alter search, which thus would drastically alter PPC. The likeliest negative outcome is the gradual disappearance of any traffic driven from long-tail search keywords.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - slowpoison 16y ago

rubyrescue 16y ago

Not sure if this was covered elsewhere, but this actually changes the SEO game in a subtle way. imagine you could rank for the term online deg but NOT online degree. SEO's rejoice, this could be profitable for consultants and linkbuilders.

brown9-2 16y ago
I'm curious if users will actually change their behavior because of this though. For example, if you decide you want to go to google.com to search for "online degree", are you likely going to stop in the middle of typing your phrase when you notice some results appear? For me the lag between typing and displaying of results seems a little too slow for this to really happen.
- eof 16y ago
  You forget that you are not the user. edit: ie not everyone is typing as quickly as you are
- alextgordon 16y ago
  Sure, if you can touch type. There's still millions of people hunting and pecking, especially on mobile devices. It's certainly plausible that people will stop to look at the results.
- stellar678 16y ago
  One of the articles I read talked about Google mentioning this....their research showed an average pause of 300ms between keystrokes (crazy!) but only 30ms between eye saccades, so users are looking around 10 times for every keystroke.
  - CamperBob 16y ago
    If I'm hunting and pecking, I'm looking at the keyboard, not the screen. Those saccades are most likely happening during the typist's search for the next key to hit.
16y ago

shimonamit 16y ago

Why would I want Google to begin searching at 'he' if I'm looking for 'hello world'? Will the instant search list relevant results so early on, so as to save me from typing the whole term?

lhnz 16y ago
Solution: type faster or downgrade your internet connection. ;)
DougBTX 16y ago
"he" brings up results for "heart" for me. "hello w" brings up "hello world" results.
jlees 16y ago
It doesn't search for 'he', it searches for the first autocomplete from 'he' - which happens to be Hertz, oh well.
- shimonamit 16y ago
  Thanks. I should have known they were smarter than that.

pbhjpbhj 16y ago

Looks like "q" is the starting letter for your project name if your punting for it to be the next big thing.

pbhjpbhj 16y ago
* you're

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

rubypay 16y ago

The instant results seem to be served from memory rather than an actual search being performed. For example, try searching for: zqqx and after the 'x' is typed, no instant results appear. However, Pressing 'enter' to submit your search will show you the full results. A new Google game: what's the shortest non-blacklisted key sequence that returns 0 instant results.

ugh 16y ago
It looks like zqqx is (for whatever reason) one of the words for which instant search is disabled. Try the four letter word starting with f, you will see exactly the same thing.

eof 16y ago

kind of cool, but I immediately turned mine off. I could imagine using it in some situations though, when I am really digging for some information and not expecting my query to bring my desired result to the top few spots.

paraschopra 16y ago

From their FAQ page http://www.google.com/instant/ http://www.google.com/instant/ * 15 new technologies contribute to Google Instant functionality. Does anyone know which are these new technologies?

jsdalton 16y ago
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=673630 http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=673630 (I apologize profusely, I just couldn't resist.)

ArturSoler 16y ago

Will some integration be done for those of us that search on the Chrome navigation bar instead of opening google.com in the first place?

ugh 16y ago
From the Q&A: That will be out in a few months. They are working on it.

coderrr 16y ago

interesting UI issue/inconsistency (in Chrome)... when pressing tab, it can either complete the current word/phrase or move to the X, so <enter> can either do nothing or clear the search box

res0nat0r 16y ago

I for one turn off google suggestions on every new pc/browser I use, it is a distraction to me and actually causes me to type slower. Maybe because I've been in front of a computer constantly for 15 years but I can type my term much faster than being distracted by results and clicking on the dropdown for them. I just wish I could disable this account wide so every time I clean my cookies/cache in Firefox I don't have to go back to preferences and turn it off again.

swah 16y ago
OTOH, with this feature sometimes you are going to change what you're searching before finishing it, because you can already see you're going the wrong way. Also, it has tab-complete.

silvertab 16y ago

Well, it's impressively fast, however, I'm not sure I will ever get to use it considering I do most of my search from the Google Chrome Omnibox and very rarely visit the actual google homepage...

Shakattack 16y ago
Exactly what I thought. It's a great feature, but just going to google.com takes up time. Maybe future integration into Chrome?
- jlees 16y ago
  It's a UI challenge, but as Techcrunch reports, this may well be in browsers at some point.

josefresco 16y ago

My question is how will this and previous auto-complete moves by Google effect the "long tail" search market. Will this reduce the number of truly unique queries and instead group people into already existing term categories? I know auto complete has been in effect for a while, but I wonder if this will only make it even more effective, thereby changing user behavior and simply re-enforcing the already existing terms.

zzzmarcus 16y ago

Strangely, it's not working yet for me in Chrome (dev channel) but it works in Safari 5.

yannk 16y ago
yes, similar here. Safari 5 & Chrome don't have it enabled. Firefox does. I thought it was related to the use of encrypted.google.com or customized search, but it doesn't seem like it. At least not directly (and incognito mode doesn't help). And I don't want to clear my google cookies which might solve the problem.

CWIZO 16y ago

This would be awesome on image search.

wesley 16y ago

So, does the referrer still include the keyword phrase used?

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

davidwparker 16y ago

Interesting, but it doesn't work on Personalized Google (google IG), so I probably won't be using it.

nailer 16y ago

Could you please link to the actual announcement, not the front page of Google? Google release their products incrementally, so not everyone has access to new features at the same time. There's others in the thread who also don't have this in their locale yet and are also reduced to guessing.

ashishbharthi 16y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672461 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672461

pbw 16y ago

This is a logical extension of the trend to do ever more computation on every key press. Think spelling correction and auto-complete. But here instead of just a local process every key press invokes hundreds of remote machines, required to assemble a single search results page. It's impressive and decadant to think your cat walking accross the keyboard can light up whole racks of remote machines.

coliveira 16y ago
> every key press invokes hundreds of remote machines, Not really. Apparently Google has an improved cache system for the most common keywords. The pre-computed results come from just one machine.
- eru 16y ago
  Yes, but your cat won't hit pre-computed results.
- EricBurnett 16y ago
  Not really. Personalization, location, etc. affect a lot. I can't find the page I was reading, but it appears that in just running through all the first letters and seeing what is suggested (a is for...) some users are seeing personalized results. And if personalizations are showing up right from character 1, caching results can't really play a big role. Not at the user level anyways; results can certainly be cached further back, but multiple computers will be used just to decide if you deserve personalizations.
  - ithkuil 16y ago
    The fact that you see location and personalization affects the search result doesn't actually mean that they perform a real search using the query that you are actually writing in your search bar. One possible way (I'm not sure exactly how it works at google, but I can guess) is that the search result is computed in many steps, one of which searches the indices and generates a list of relevant results, which then are passed to a personalization layer which modifies (reorders, merges, trims) the index results and finally it's passed to a presentation layer which renders the html page (perhaps there are other layers too, irrelevant for this discussion). So, the "instant" search would basically replace first layer, the actual search in the big indices with a precomputed search list for each phrase generated by search suggestions (or a cache of these, which is filled by actual searches if the element is not present). The personalization layer would be free to do things to that precomputed search results, incurring into smaller load because of several reasons: a) fewer users have personalization and on fewer b) personalization has to access less data, and the whole search retrieve functionality is more IO bound than cpu bound. As for location, there could be one of these 'caches' per location. I'm sure that they don't do any query "as you type" because the 'instant' page result is always the result of the first "search suggestion". Try to type "F#" (as user 'singular' suggested), the first suggestion is "f to c", and the search results are about temperature conversion.

jacquesm 16y ago

Just 'w' will give weather, but with an extra 'w' ww will give 'facebook.com' as the first result, that's interesting.

frou_dh 16y ago
When I used Chrome, typing w in the location bar gave www.facebook.com as the first choice (no local cache). I'm sure it deserves to be there but that's a bit icky if you have no interest in it ;-)
BonesLF 16y ago
Not that strange considering it is the most popular site on the internet next to google.com. If it's trying to predict your destination this is correct a staggeringly large percent of the time. Of course "your" implies the masses. They use Google like we would use the address bar. As someone touched on above with longtails, the real interesting bit will be to see what the Google keyword tool says about search terms next month(or maybe the month after that). We'll have to see if longtails have fallen off the face of the Earth or not. Maybe the autosuggest will still have a major impact vs. what they see in the SERPs below as they are typing. Edit: I got Walmart as the first result for 'w'. Could be a location-based decision engine potentially. Fuckin rednecks
- gcampbell 16y ago
  It's almost certainly location based - the first result I see for "b" is "bart", which I imagine only applies if you live in the Bay Area (for those unfamiliar: http://www.bart.gov/ http://www.bart.gov/ )

exit 16y ago

am i overlooking something, or is there no way to use the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button now?

Skroob 16y ago
If you hover over a result in the suggestion list, there's an I'm Feeling Lucky option on the right. Did people ever really use that for anything besides google bomb jokes though?
- barmstrong 16y ago
  Heard Marissa Mayer say one time that while people don't use it they like the fact it's there (let's them know Google is fun and has a sense of humor).
felideon 16y ago
It shows up when you hover over the suggestions.
mr_b 16y ago
You can use the right arrow for 'I'm feeling Lucky'.

kordless 16y ago

This is a total ripoff of keyboardr.com.

moultano 16y ago
Keyboardr just searches for the letters you've already typed in, not the words it thinks you will type.
zach 16y ago
Or you could say it's a ripoff of zippily.com which I did four years ago over the weekend after Google released their Ajax Search API. Except that live search was already something that was happening on lots of sites back then. By now it's hard to see that instant searching is even novel, much less a ripoff of any other interface. Google putting their completion together with their instant search (an opportunity not available to API users, of course) is pretty neat, though.

orblivion 16y ago

Do we really need this? Isn't the time it takes to finish a query the last problem on our hands? Or am I just a spoiled fast typer?

barmstrong 16y ago
Wasn't Outlook good enough? Did we really need faster search in Gmail? This is gonna be one of those things you didn't know you needed till you got used to it, then you'll look back and wonder how you ever lived without it.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- orblivion 16y ago
  Well waiting for your computer to respond can be really frustrating. Having to finish typing something isn't so bad. For me anyway. So it'll help, but for such a huge infrastructure overhaul, is it really worth it?
orangecat 16y ago
We don't "need" it, but taking Google's stats at face value for the moment, it will save 350 million hours per year. That's not insignificant.
- izendejas 16y ago
  Yea, but at what cost? Are they using more power? I would think so as they not only auto-complete, but also generate countless search results in rapid-fire mode. For every query, how many more sets of results are returned? On average, it's easily more than one. It's only one when they predict your query.
  - pjscott 16y ago
    If people like this and it makes search more server-intensive to run, that works in Google's favor by making it more expensive to compete with them on instant search. They're the champions when it comes to infrastructure, and they know it.

chintan 16y ago

Auto-complete/Tab complete is priceless! Feels like I'm using Vim on google.com. Thank You!

crux 16y ago

Speaking from a UI standpoint, I find the leap of the bar from the middle to the top of the screen to be very disorienting. I know that the middle-of-the-page input field is a real visual trademark for Google, but if they want to push this feature, they might have to move the box up to where it is currently leaping.

Shakattack 16y ago
Agreed, even some smooth movement would make a difference - the jump is very sudden
ugh 16y ago
You would have to test it but I think some sort of non-distracting animation could help (a quick fade-out and fade-in maybe – even if it’s only a few milliseconds long). Actually moving the search bar up with an animation would most certainly either take too long or be so fast as to be equally or even more jarring.
desigooner 16y ago
IMO, this change is a little distracting and annoying as far as my searches go. Putting that aside, a question that arises is how will this affect the user in terms of accessibility and screenreaders.. usually autofocusing to fields is not encouraged as far as accessibility is concerned.
Sephr 16y ago
Maybe moving the search bar as soon as you focus it may be an adequate compromise.
sukuriant 16y ago
I would prefer it if, when Google is in "instant" mode, the search bar is automatically on the top. Either that, or perhaps the search could just be shown at the bottom. That said, the "jump" to the top is enough for me to disable the instant search. I've wanted to go back to it because it seems like a great idea, but that teleport to the top keeps confusing me, and those seconds of re-orientation negate the enhancements they intended to provide. This is my opinion based on my experience with it so far, of course.

mrshoe 16y ago

I'm sorry, but this is a solution to the wrong problem. I switched from AltaVista to Google back in 1998, not because their search engine returned results more quickly, but because their results were much more relevant. In the past few years, SEOs have set up micro-sites on just about any topic I could possibly search for and they've managed to rank highly for those topics. Am I the only one who's sick of being taken to these shallow landing pages smothered in ads? Does anyone else think Google's search results are now far less relevant than they were 5 years ago? I don't need search results that update live as I type. I need to find what I'm looking for.

AlexC04 16y ago
You've really hit the nail right on the head for exactly what I've been feeling some sort of odd, decentralized anxiety about for a while. While reading your comment I realized that was the problem. Google kinda sucks now because of people gaming the system. But who else is out there? I'd probably switch my search if I knew where else to try.
- laktek 16y ago
  Maybe to duckduckgo.com ?
  - AlexC04 16y ago
    i'll try it for a week and see how it feels. :)
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- josefresco 16y ago
  Use Bing, or DDG. A healthy search market means SEO companies have to target two (or more, go DDG!) set of somewhat unique rules which makes it harder to game. The fact that Google dominates means there's one playbook for most SEO. Bing (or anyone) could really make some ground if they tackled the low quality content SPAM market as opposed to simply trying to be as close to Google as possible so people will switch. How about some direct ads showing spammy searches at Google compared with clean results at ....

peterbe 16y ago

That is genuinely impressive. Never seen anything like it before on any other website. Not sure it's needed now with the great autocomplete but it sure looks really great.

chaosmachine 16y ago
I built something like it a few years ago: http://drupalmodules.com/module-finder http://drupalmodules.com/module-finder No autocomplete, though.
- larsberg 16y ago
  As did I, back in mid-2003. Of course, it was just an excuse to try out the then-new "Google Web APIs" :-) http://lars.com/tools/IncGoogleSearch/inc-google-search.jpg http://lars.com/tools/IncGoogleSearch/inc-google-search.jpg

awa 16y ago

Bing Instant? : http://www.istartedsomething.com/livesearch/ http://www.istartedsomething.com/livesearch/

jcl 16y ago

This change has the brilliant side-effect of coaxing users to give more specific descriptions of what they are searching for. Before instant search, a search term was sufficient if it brought up the desired result in the first page or two, but now users will continue typing until the page they are looking for appears in the first two or three results. Google could (for example) use this info to come up with better descriptions for subsets of ambiguous searches, improving the relevance of search suggestions.

btilly 16y ago

My opinion is that this is a challenge to Microsoft. "So you want to compete in search, well match this! See whether your server infrastructure can hold up!" Having used the feature for a while, what I've found is that I basically don't finish typing. I just stop when I have good enough results. At first I found it annoying, but after I got used to it I found it very nice. Now I find myself annoyed that it isn't built into chrome's search bar.

Brashman 16y ago
The fact that it's not built into Chrome's search bar means that I will never see it after the 5 minutes I just spent playing with it. I've been searching from my browser, whether Chrome or Firefox, for a long time now.
- nkohari 16y ago
  It's just an asynchronous load of data, so I don't see why Chrome couldn't leverage it as well. Might lead to some interesting UI, actually.
- btilly 16y ago
  How long do you think it will be until there are plugins giving you the same feature in Firefox and Chrome?
  - phjohnst 16y ago
    Marissa Mayer apparently said: "Sometime in the next few months this is something that will be activated in the browsers" via: http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/08/google-instant-chrome/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/08/google-instant-chrome/
contextfree 16y ago
Someone actually built a Bing-based instant search a while back: http://www.istartedsomething.com/livesearch/ http://www.istartedsomething.com/livesearch/ It's not nearly as responsive, dunno to what extent that's imposed by MSFT's server infrastructure though.

mtholking 16y ago

Is Auto-Complete Optimization something SEOs already focus on? For example, trying to get the keywords they rank well on placed relatively higher in an auto-complete list for Google, Bing, etc?

ambiate 16y ago
Typically, no. Let us say you have a keyword like 'patio umbrella' to toy with. You've purchased the domain patioumbrella.com and already gained a huge one up in the SEO rankings for Google's algorithm. What's next in line? Creating original content that Google thinks associate with that keyword. Emphasis on "what Google thinks" because Google believes if you're ranking for a keyword, you should be ranking for related keywords. [re: GKT synonyms] So, in the keyword tool, I search 'patio umbrella' and generate synonyms. I see things like "patio cushions", "wicker patio furniture", etc. Google would give me more rank value if I also created content for these keywords. Lets say patio umbrella (lights|stand|base) show up in autocomplete (which they do). If I try to rank for all of these keywords, most of which aren't related to my root keyword, Google will be confused as to what my site is actually about. (This is my understanding and my experience)

joey_bananas 16y ago

Annoyingly busy. I sort of feel like this is a prime example why you don't put engineers in charge of UI. Just because we can is not a good enough reason to do it. Also, having both a dropdown and a whole page refresh, what?

pjscott 16y ago
It feels less busy after you've used it for a little while, and your brain has had the chance to adjust to having most of the page change whenever you type something.

alexandros 16y ago

I think this is Google's way of training the average user to search like a pro. Many people don't understand that sometimes it takes multiple queries to find what you need. This seems like an extremely effective way to communicate that and encourage users to fiddle with their queries.

coliveira 16y ago

This change may be helpful for users, but will be even more for Google advertisement programs. Basically, they can show more advertisements for each user visit. For example: user starts typing a long tail keyword search and an unrelated result is displayed. Even though the user was not looking for that specific keyword combination, he will see the results (and the ads) for that keyword.

bambax 16y ago

I often use Google to search for very specific phrases -- error messages, for example, in quotes -- and that doesn't help. It actually hurts. What hurts even more is that Google returns documents that don't contain all the search terms, but where the missing search terms can be found in incoming links (or so it says). If you try to use the allintext: parameter you're almost always considered a bot (why??!?) and your queries get delayed or you're shown an indecipherable captcha (they're getting harder, or maybe I actually am a bot, because nowadays I fail to solve every other one). It seems Google is aiming at some lower common denominator of the general public, someone who can't spell, can't type, can't be bothered to learn a basic search syntax and just wants to know where to buy the latest gadget. There is a space to be filled for a "Google for grownups".

moultano 16y ago
This isn't a great solution, but prepend words that aren't showing up with a + sign to enforce that they appear on the document.

jules 16y ago

I love it. This makes it much quicker to edit and tune your query to get what you want.

danielnicollet 16y ago

I work at a company where we have been doing this sort of stuff for a while now. It's very impressive in the case of Google because of the size of its index and the level of error tolerance of the matching sequence used. I wonder how complete these instant results are compared to the now lame old click-to-submit search results? I tried to test and noticed the count of instant results is slightly smaller but the top items appear to be the same most of the time. Anyone has insights?

origoterra 16y ago
Well speed is nice but I sure don't want to loose quality of search results for that. Google is fast enough as it is. I would say that it's probably unfeasible to process a query over the full web index so there some amount of corner cutting going on here. What type?

bherms 16y ago

I don't really see the benefit here. I understand it may save 2-5 seconds per search, but it's not as if though those 2-5 seconds are improving my experience any. Assuming the time saved was important, they should've just implemented an AJAX search instead: type, press enter, dynamic load without page refresh. That's the real time killer. Having the results change while I'm typing is actually kind of annoying.

hanibash 16y ago

In my opinion, this is the same kind of Google-think that brought about Google Wave. It's extremely impressive, no doubt, but it doesn't seem like something users were clamoring for. Just as Google will learn a lot from Google Wave despite its low usability, so will it learn a lot from this, whether users really want or use it or not. Only time will tell if Google's engineering-centric culture will ultimately win for it in the end. Its been all wins so far, hasn't it?

dualboot 16y ago

I hate this and thought I'd bumped something this morning when I discovered this "feature" accidentally. Really distracting the jarring transition.

vaksel 16y ago

I think this little change is going to fundamentally change the internet landscape. a) no more long tail keywords. those people will see an answer before they get to the part of the phrase that makes it longtail(so if you ranked for that 5 term keyword...too bad). i.e. if you rank for "best auto insurance companies", you've now lost all your business to those who rank for "best auto insurance" b) much faster searching for users = less traffic for you. If you are below the fold...chances are that you are screwed. Why bother reading below the #5 result...if I can just add a few more keywords to narrow my search? Basically the scrolling is going to take me longer, than it is to adjust my search phrase. c) much more focus on auto-complete. Before you'd see some auto-complete strings, that would show only 2-3 hits a month according to Google. But now this same string might get a few thousand, just because people are automatically shown those results. Overall I find that it's good for users, good for high ranking websites, and bad for everyone else. This is going to make the SEO thing much more competitive, since it essentially eliminates the long tail.

VMG 16y ago
a) was also the case previously a) and b) contradict each other
- vaksel 16y ago
  a) no...results didn't load automatically. Now as you type you see the results right away. b) no they don't..,A = natural long tail search, where the person starts off with a long tail string. B = the recurring searches trying to find something
ojbyrne 16y ago
For me (and I'll admit it perhaps doesn't apply to others), it has almost no effect. I use the firefox search box mostly.
- vaksel 16y ago
  same, but search box is only good for your first search

evanjacobs 16y ago

I wonder if this will cause average users to begin understanding and using the "tab complete" interaction. That could open up interesting uses in all kinds of apps.

pg1 16y ago

I think saving time sales point is the biggest bullshit from G. Google should be more honest to there users. They should tell us that they need more page impressions+ads.

jhuckestein 16y ago

I'd really like to use the arrow keys to navigate the results instead of the suggestions.

pedrokost 16y ago

Google Instant will make Google's Web History less useful (if it was of any use before) and easier to trick, since the History records only if you actually press Enter after the query or if you click a results. However a lot of information can be revealed from the description of the results that Google offers and so people won't always have to click Search to get the info they required.

ugh 16y ago
It also remembers when you were looking at search results for more than three seconds (it will even distinguish between normal searches and those three-second things). Unless you can be done in less than three seconds you cannot trick Web History.
- xiongchiamiov 16y ago
  With link-hinting, it's quite possible to be off the page in under 3 seconds. Of course, the percentage of Google users who use link-hinting is... very small.

fnazeeri 16y ago

Well that was interesting. I started migrating my blog from TypePad to WordPress last week and it's been "down" or intermittent since then. What's amazing is that Google has erased 5 years of really highly ranked search results. For example I had the #1 or #2 result for "liquidation preference" and now it's nowhere to be seen. I wonder if the "real time" will turn Google into Twitter...sad if true.

xiongchiamiov 16y ago
If your site has been down recently, then that's what removed it from search results, not Google Instant.

jlft 16y ago

This looks more like a "labs" feature than a real improvement. Doesn't add any value to me... glad they allow us to disabled it.

nhebb 16y ago

<smartass>I like the way it instantly changes my C# queries to C in the suggest list.</smartass>

hotmind 16y ago

Instead of writing a lengthy comment on HN, I wrote a blog post: 9 Ways SEO Can "Best" Google Instant: http://goo.gl/ez2a http://goo.gl/ez2a It's a spicy title I'll admit, and guaranteed to raise the ire of some HN folk, but that was not my intension.

Pistos2 16y ago

This doesn't work at all for me in Opera. Has anyone else had success in Opera? edit: Apparently Opera is not among the browsers listed here: http://www.google.com/instant/ http://www.google.com/instant/

r4ps 16y ago
It does work, you just need to mask as Firefox: http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2010/09/08/google-instant http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2010/09/08/google-instant

typedef_void 16y ago

Anyone else find the constantly refreshing search results annoying? If so, do you know of any cognitive psychology literature to explain why? I personally find this instant search infuriating and just want my standard old Google search back, where things do NOT change unless I'm mentally prepared for them to change.

mhidalgo 16y ago

This is pretty mentally jaring, I realized how much searching is a process that I had practiced in certain way for long time. In a couple minutes playing with it , I found myself figuring out how to search for something again. I know there are objections to the UI, or whether it actually improves the search results, or whether the speed increase is worth it but just from a mental perspective it has made me realize how the act of searching is wired into my thought process.

sashthebash 16y ago

The real question is... will this increase or decrease Google's revenue through Adwords on the result pages? They will for sure show more ads, maybe making chances higher for a user to click an ad, but at least for me, after trying it out a bit, it seems like I focus more on the results themselves when typing, as they change all the time, without giving attention to the ads. And as already mentioned, long tail searches might be used less often, so you cannot buy cheap uncompetitive ads to drive traffic to your site, you have to use the big keywords that are suggested.

singular 16y ago

Try typing 'F#', the instant results are irrelevant to F# the language (probably due to the # symbol), but when you click search they become relevant. I would prefer it to be consistent :)

ithkuil 16y ago
This happens because the "instant" search results are basically precomputed search results of the "first suggestion". When you type "F#" google search is actually suggesting you "f to c" and the results is displayed accordingly. It seems that google is not simply executing the partial search as you type (it would be too expensive even for them) See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1674707 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1674707

ssn 16y ago

Google Instant Search is just too distracting.

utefan001 16y ago

Does anyone know of a firefox plugin that will allow us to blacklist sites we don't want to see in our google search results?