eBrandz Blog

Three things to keep in mind about Google Instant search

Google has just come up with a major modification to the manner in which its highly popular search engine serves results to the users. As you may have noticed, results now surface in the search box even as you are typing a particular search query. And as you keep on typing text, relevant results of Google search change to match your terms.

Known as Google Instant, it’s the default search introduced for all laptop and desktop users who visit google.com on some of the most popular and widely used browsers – Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Google’s very own Chrome. (It is set to appear on Internet Explorer 8 browser, according to a Google spokesman.)

You can get more information about Google Instant on Google’s website as well as on the search giant’s blog. The details are self-explanatory, except for a few usage and result delivery related issues. First, as a user types, Google will deliver the relevant search results for what is the most likely (or logical) completion of one’s search terms. It will also pop up a listing of five most logical completions for one’s search.

If you wish to scroll through the instant search results for those particular alternate completions, do not click with your mouse on them. Instead, make use of the arrow keys on your keyboard to hop down-n-up through them. And if you click on any of the alternate completions instead, the search engine makes the rest of the word list go away and display the results for that one specific term.

Second, if you happen to reach Google through the Chrome browser’s omnibar or through a browser toolbar, the new Google Instant will not yet probably work for you. To get the results, first go to Google.com and employ that instead. (It’s not yet fully ready and compatible for mobile devices yet, according to the company.)

Third, if you really do not like it, here’s how you may turn it off: If the browser currently has ‘Google Instant’ enabled, visit the homepage of google.com and check the right of its search box. You will notice a link in blue type, denoting: ‘Instant is on.’ Once you click that, a menu will pops up to turn off (or on) Google Instant, as well as an option to know more about
the feature.

Importantly, Google Instant consumes much less bandwidth than one might think, since its proposed results are so optimized as to take up minimal data space compared with even a tiny photo.