Google Announces Google Instant, Speedy Search Results Before You Finish Typing

At a Google press event in San Francisco today, the number one search company announced a new feature it calls Google Instant.

The new feature combines existing Google tricks like spell corrections, real-time search, and geographic relevance to make info-gathering at Google.com a more predictive experience. The key word there, “predictive,” is a little frightening, but it’s accurate. Google is using it’s search algorithms and a host of other information to predict the info you’re looking for, literally as you type it, letter by letter.

The service works in three parts: Instant results, query predictions, and search results that change as you scroll.

Instants results: Self-explanatory; enter text, watch results populate instantly. A popular demo during the press event was using the letter “W” to queue up the local weather forecast.

Hit the  Tab button and Google automatically enters the first auto-complete option into the search field as a query. A user can then refine that query or start browsing search results.

Predictions: Things get interesting here.

1 – We decided to do a search for our least favorite ball club. We entered the letter “Y” populates the auto-complete tool with sites like Yahoo, YouTube, and Yahoo mail. It also displays those sites in the search results.

2 – Entering “Ya” turned up largely the same results and auto-complete options.

3 – When we got to “Yan”, Google’s predictive powers got much warmer and the auto-complete options included “yankees”, “yankees stadium”, and “yankees schedule”. Among the search results: the Bronx Bombers’ official website, then the NY Daily News Yankees landing page.

4 – Interestingly enough, when a co-worker in Chicago entered “Yan” into Google, the search results that populated below were largely the same (save score results from an upcoming game between the Yanks and the Baltimore Orioles).

The auto-complete results, however, only included “Yankees” and “Yankee Stadium” as the first and third options. In second was “Yankee Candle”. That’s an interesting example of how the detail and nuance of Google’s emphasis on geography during  search.

Scroll-to-Search

The last component is Scroll-to-Search. Users can tap the arrow keys of their keyboard to scroll through auto-complete options, watching the search results below evolve instantly along the way.

Here’s how you can test it: Begin by typing your query into the search field and, with the first letter, the list of search results appears below. What’s more, the list of results are updated with each letter you enter. During the demo, Google engineers entered the letter W into the search field and local weather for San Francisco populated as the top search result.

Google also announced today that it reached the 1 billion users a week milestone. Though that number includes users of all the company’s various web services,  there’s no doubt that with more than 65% of the search engine market share, there are millions of Google search addicts. Many of whom will get a kick out of the efficiency and ease-of-use of the site’s new system.

Google Instant is rolling out to Chrome, FireFox, Safari, and IE8 users in the United States today, and will hit more countries in Europe and Asia later this week. Remember, you’ll need to be signed into Google to test the service. Let us know if you expect Google Instant to save you valuable info-hunting and gathering time, or if you’re just “Meh!”