Friday, September 10, 2010

Introducing Google Instant: Panacea or Annoyance?



From the Google Blog:
Did you know?:

* Before Google Instant, the typical searcher took more than 9 seconds to enter a search term, and we saw many examples of searches that took 30-90 seconds to type.
* Using Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.
* If everyone uses Google Instant globally, we estimate this will save more than 3.5 billion seconds a day. That’s 11 hours saved every second.

Looking forward to trying the new Instant Search feature. Thankfully, the Google team allows you to turn off the feature if it becomes an annoyance. If you don't want to see results as you type, you can turn off Google Instant by clicking the link next to the search box on any search results page, or by visiting your Preferences page. However, for the novice searcher, prompting by a variety of keyword choices may be a good thing!

2 comments:

Linda Straube (Ms. S) said...

Check out YouTube Instant:
http://ytinstant.com/ as reported by Washington Post Blog and Mashable.

Linda Straube (Ms. S) said...

Couldn't resist adding a link to this PC World article which quotes Sergey Brin as saying "we want Google to be the third half of your brain". Quite a concept as we struggle to get high school students to think for themselves, develop keywords and construct a meaningful search.