
Google Instant Search Released - wlfsbrg
http://www.google.com/webhp?sclient=psy&
======
mrshoe
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.

~~~
neilk
Your own perception of why you switched may be partially in error.

Google has done a lot of research to show that speed matters quite a lot to
users. When results appear in less than 250ms the user is much more satisfied
than even 500ms. Anything less than a quarter of a second is thought of as
"instantaneous" and the user starts thinking of it very differently.

Here, they are taking it down to less than 100ms, which is now operating
faster than the user can even perceive (for that matter, it's faster than many
users can _type_ ). So the real effect is that they have now eliminated the
need to click on "Search". So now Google is even more interwoven into your
thought processes, and other search engines are going to seem unbearably slow
pretty soon.

~~~
peterwwillis
it's funny you bring this up because we were just discussing site performance
at work today. what i took away from it is this: speed is mostly relevant when
there's a competing product providing similar value and you risk losing
business due to inferior user experience.

if google were far better than their competitors at providing what users want
(relevant search results they don't have to dig through) they could take 5
seconds and it wouldn't matter. the added value of getting what you want on
the first try at the top of the page would keep people using that product.

yes, 500ms can seem like an awful lot when you come from a world of 250ms. but
if the results returned from the 500ms are significantly better, you bet your
ass users will sit through double the time to get better, more reliable
results.

~~~
andreyf
_yes, 500ms can seem like an awful lot when you come from a world of 250ms.
but if the results returned from the 500ms are significantly better, you bet
your ass users will sit through double the time to get better, more reliable
results._

Are you sure?

~~~
lhnz
Are we talking about opinions here? If so, I have mine, and: I agree with him.
I might spend 500ms waiting for my search results but my greatest annoyance is
still having to spend 10 minutes trawling through SEO 'content' to find a
legitimate website.

~~~
andreyf
_Are we talking about opinions here?_

Sorry, that was the point. We could talk about opinions, sure. But all major
search contenders do significant user research into how people will react to
much less significant changes than Instant Search. This change had its but
user-tested and dogfooded for quite some time.

------
vaksel
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.

~~~
ojbyrne
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
same, but search box is only good for your first search

------
btilly
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
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.

~~~
btilly
How long do you think it will be until there are plugins giving you the same
feature in Firefox and Chrome?

~~~
phjohnst
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/>

------
crux
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.

~~~
ugh
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.

------
ladon86
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.

~~~
ugh
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.).

------
rubyrescue
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
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.

~~~
stellar678
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
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.

------
nailer
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
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672461>

------
davidu
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
[http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=187309)

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
Three seconds? Yikes. Will be interesting to see how this impacts big money
PPC spenders...

~~~
guyzero
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
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.

------
pbw
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
> 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.

~~~
EricBurnett
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
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.

------
alexandros
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.

------
jcl
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.

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

------
ugh
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
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
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.

~~~
nanairo
It sounds like it would be confusing... but they let you switch it off, so all
the best to them.

~~~
jlees
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
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. :)

------
res0nat0r
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
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.

------
orblivion
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
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.

~~~
orblivion
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?

------
peterbe
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
I built something like it a few years ago:

<http://drupalmodules.com/module-finder>

No autocomplete, though.

~~~
larsberg
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>

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

~~~
davidw
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
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
AFAIK not SafeSearch but "in addition," the second part of your qute.

~~~
ugh
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
They probably do something like: if a search term returns a high density of
SafeSearch-flagged top results, then don't autocomplete.

~~~
ithkuil
and if it doesn't autocomplete in the plain old search suggestions feature,
then it will not appear in the instant results, because these are precomputed
results for queries that are generated by the suggestion engine.

------
BTBurke
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
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/>

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Multiple submissions on the same subject:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672391> <\- This one

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672388> <\- This is an explanation

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672346> <\- First

------
silvertab
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
Exactly what I thought. It's a great feature, but just going to google.com
takes up time. Maybe future integration into Chrome?

~~~
jlees
It's a UI challenge, but as Techcrunch reports, this may well be in browsers
at some point.

------
bambax
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
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.

------
acqq
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/>

"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."

------
coliveira
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.

------
ArturSoler
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
From the Q&A: That will be out in a few months. They are working on it.

------
rubypay
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
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.

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

~~~
pbhjpbhj
* you're

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

------
joey_bananas
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
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.

------
eof
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.

------
sashthebash
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.

------
mtholking
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
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)

------
paraschopra
From their FAQ page <http://www.google.com/instant/>

* 15 new technologies contribute to Google Instant functionality.

Does anyone know which are these new technologies?

~~~
jsdalton
<http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=673630>

(I apologize profusely, I just couldn't resist.)

------
shimonamit
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?

~~~
jlees
It doesn't search for 'he', it searches for the first autocomplete from 'he' -
which happens to be Hertz, oh well.

~~~
shimonamit
Thanks. I should have known they were smarter than that.

------
danielnicollet
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
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?

------
mhidalgo
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.

------
singular
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
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>

------
hanibash
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?

------
josefresco
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.

------
pedrokost
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
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
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
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
If your site has been down recently, then that's what removed it from search
results, not Google Instant.

------
awa
Bing Instant? : <http://www.istartedsomething.com/livesearch/>

------
typedef_void
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.

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

~~~
cryptoz
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
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 :)

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

~~~
Skroob
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
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).

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

~~~
yannk
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.

------
Pistos2
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/>

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

------
evanjacobs
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.

------
dualboot
I hate this and thought I'd bumped something this morning when I discovered
this "feature" accidentally.

Really distracting the jarring transition.

------
jlft
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.

------
utefan001
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?

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

~~~
BonesLF
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
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/> )

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

------
CWIZO
This would be awesome on image search.

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

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

------
coderrr
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

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

------
ssn
Google Instant Search is just too distracting.

------
kordless
This is a total ripoff of keyboardr.com.

~~~
zach
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.

------
sp332
what does "?sclient=psy" mean?

~~~
pfarrell
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
The internal codename for this project at Google was "Psychic Search".

------
hotmind
Instead of writing a lengthy comment on HN, I wrote a blog post: 9 Ways SEO
Can "Best" Google Instant: <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.

------
pg1
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.

