Google: you're holding up our search results with your slow typing

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Google has yet again revolutionized internet search. This time by providing search algorithms that are so intuitive search results appear before you have finished typing in your query.

"It's a simple and straightforward idea," explains Google, "people can get results as they type their queries."

"As you can imagine, searching even before someone types isn't easy - which is why we are so excited today to be unveiling Google Instant," said Google's Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience on September 8.

Google Instant provides users with dynamic search results that are automatically updated as the user types. The real-time, letter by letter, predictive results reflect the searcher's "most likely completion."

Implementation of Google Instant will provide major benefits for users, the most obvious of which is faster search results.

As Google's Matt Cutts asserts, "Google typically returns search results in milliseconds, but it takes several seconds for you to type a query. In other words, the limiting factor on a typical search is you."

Google Instant doesn't have to wait for your fingers to finish stumbling around the keyboard, it's already predicting the search query you have in mind.

"Our testing has shown that Google Instant saves the average searcher two to five seconds per search," said Mayer.  

"That may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up. With Google Instant, we estimate that we'll save our users 11 hours with each passing second!"

Rival company Yahoo was reportedly working on a similar feature for Yahoo Search called LiveSearch back in 2005. According to Stephen Hood, one of Yahoo's former search team members, the feature was never properly implemented and "[t]here is basically no trace left of LiveSearch these days."

Google Instant will roll out to users in the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia first with other countries and languages following over the next several months.

For more information on Google Instant head to http://www.google.com/instant/ or watch Google's instructional video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElubRNRIUg4&feature=player_embedded

A Googler's thoughts on Google Instant: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/thoughts-on-google-instant/

Stephen Hood's article "Google Instant is an example of how Yahoo could have won in search": http://uniquehazards.tumblr.com/post/1088334156/google-instant-is-an-example-of-how-yahoo-could-have