Google’s rapid new version of its search engine, Google Instant, is making waves internationally, but will not be available immediately for South Africa users.
In a world where the imperative is for everything to become bigger, better and faster, Google has redefined the boundaries of web searches with Google Instant, a new version of the search engine that displays results as you type. When typing a search query using Google Instant, results appear after the first letter is entered, and they continue to update as the user types.
Google said the following about Google Instant:
• 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.
• 15 new technologies contribute to Google Instant functionality
Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.
Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.
Where is it available?
Google Instant is starting to roll-out to users on Google domains in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia who use the following browsers: Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8. Users on domains other than Google.com can only access Google Instant if they are signed in to a Google Account. Google will continue to add new domains and languages over the next several months.
More web news
The Associated Press reports that US web surfers are spending more time socialising on Facebook than searching with Google.
In August, Americans spent a total of 41.1 million minutes on Facebook, comScore said, about 9.9% of their web-surfing minutes for the month. That just passed the 39.8 million minutes, or 9.6 percent people spent on all of Google Inc.’s sites combined. This includes YouTube, Gmail, Google news and other content sites.