Unless you've been in a cave for the last few days you can't fail to have noticed that Google has made a radical change in the way in which the search behemoth is displaying results. Essentially when you start to type in your search terms Google instantly displays results based on what you've typed into the search box, it produces suggestions and tries to finish off your search for you with greyed out text.
As you'd expect, there are pro and con attitudes towards this development. Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of Search Products, said, "The
user benefits of Google Instant are many but the primary one is time
saved." Their blog post on the development states "Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely
completion and streams results in real-time for those
predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive,
predictive and powerful." Google estimates that users can save two to five seconds per search. It could also be argued that it allows people to change their search terms quickly - if you see the results coming up on the screen and they're not what you're hoping for, you can stop the search at that point, rethink the strategy and try again.
So - is this any good? Well, as you'll have seen, I've just mentioned the pro side, and I'm pretty much in the con camp; I don't like it. I don't regard this as a new and innovative way of searching, in fact I think it's a step backwards. While Google argue that Instant saves you time, I think it's going to be taking longer to search, as people need to stop, review what they're seeing on the screen and carry on. You could argue that you're ending up with better results and I think that's a very valid comment, and I find it interesting that Google is emphasising time saving rather than better results. There's virtually nothing in their blog post that talks about better searching, just faster. I certainly found the whole experience to be very distracting with results leaping up, suggestions flying in, grey text popping up in advance of what I was typing - way too much!
Good searching requires thought and a bit of planning - I'm sorry, but it does. What Instant does - as the name suggests, is give you instant results. Not better results, not good results, just instant results. The idea is that you don't need to finish your search, just accept what Google gives you. Now, if you trust in Google, in algorythms that give a high ranking for racist websites when searching for Martin Luther King, or poorly photoshopped pictures of Michelle Obama then you'll be happy. Google Instant is a huge step down the road of 'Google knows best'. Google doesn't know best, despite what they may like you to believe. It's a step away from social search in fact, which is what people are becoming interested in. Facebook is pushing into the search arena with the Like option, and for a lot of searches are you going to be happier finding stuff that your friends and colleagues think are interesting, or what Google assumes you'll like?
Google Instant stops you thinking - if it's making all these suggestions and it's very easy to just go along with what they suggest. This is going to be freaking out the SEO folks - I can already see their clients asking them to fix it so that their website gets a high ranking for 'mobi'. This is actually an interesting search - take a second and think for yourself where I'm going with that - chances are you'll be thinking mobile phone, and you'd be right. However, Instant is suggesting anything but that - Mobileme, mobile homes, mobile tv, mobile press register - but no mobile phones!
I'd have preferred it if Google had actually spent time improving the search functionality instead of messing around with what's essentially a gimmick. Despite this departure they're still lagging behind the competition in many areas. What Google is trying to do is stop you thinking and start accepting what they tell you. I don't think that's a step forward for anyone, except them.
Recent Comments