Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2010, as a news piece written days after Google Instant launched. Google later discontinued Instant, reportedly in 2017, so the closing instructions for turning it off no longer apply.
The world’s most widely used search engine, Google, has made new changes to its searches: it has introduced Google Instant. Larry Page and Sergey Brin aim to anticipate what people want to find by showing results before we’ve finished typing the query. This is possible because Google already knows our browsing habits and shows results geared to searches we’ve made before.
Most of you will already have noticed what I’m talking about: the search completes itself as you type in the search box. So don’t worry, it isn’t a virus, and you haven’t switched on some extra feature. It’s Google Instant.
Google wants to cut the time spent on searches and, while it’s at it, go one better. If Bing (Microsoft) and Yahoo already struggled to match the quality of its search results, with Instant they’ve been left light-years behind.
But it’s not all upside. Many users see Google Instant as nothing more than a distraction, and bloggers are starting to worry that the rules of SEO might change. Given that most people who use a search engine aren’t expert searchers, the results will be exactly the same with or without Instant. You’ll simply have to sharpen your concentration when you search.
If this feature distracts you and you want to turn it off, just go to the tab next to the search box and disable it.
Featured image: © User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
