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The day has finally arrived; Google is set to make several major announcements related to making Google’s search engine faster and more dynamic.
Google has been hinting about today’s big announcements for days now, primarily through some interesting logo changes. We expect Google to announce the ability to search as you type, as well as AJAX updates that should make Google load faster than ever. You never know what will come up at these events though, which is why we’re here at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to bring you today’s big news live.
Here are my live notes:
Google’s Search Event: Live Notes
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All times are in Pacific Standard Time
9:38 A.M.: We’re going to start with a “State of the Union” speech about Google search. The emphasis, of course, is on speed and making the search experience fast.
9:39: “One part art, one part science.”
9:40: Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products & User Experience is now on stage. She started with a big stat: 1 billion searchers per week
9:41: Now Mayer is discussing some of the new features of Google Search. Google Caffeine, Real-Time Search, timeline views, spell corrections, enhancements to its Q&A, stars in search, etc.
9:42: Google Squared is being discussed.
9:43: Mayer is discussing the Google redesign that launched in May. And now she’s playing the commercial the company aired during the Super Bowl.
9:45: “Today represents a fundamental shift in search.” Mayer is discussing why we’re in MOMA for today’s announcement, starting with a discussion of a Matisse painting here in the museum, Woman with a Hat.
9:48: She’s discussing the Lichtenstein Mirror painting, which is only at MOMA during certain times. Google search can help you learn more about it and figure out where it is.
9:48: It takes a user 9 seconds to enter a query into Google. It takes 800 ms for networking time, 300 ms for serving results, and 15 seconds to select a search result.
9:50: The problem to increasing search speed is the 9 seconds to type and the 15 seconds browsing results. It takes time to type and think, plain and simple. But Google thinks it can even make this more efficient.
9:51: Launching: Google Instant
9:52: Google Instant automatically pulls up search results as you type. There is no hitting the enter button at all. The results appear as soon as you type a letter. It predicts what you’re about to type and delivers results based on those predictions.
9:53: The demo…damn, that’s fast. You just have to hit tab to complete a search query, or you can scroll up and down with the arrow keys to see search results for different related or predicted queries.
9:54: The demo continues. “Fauvism” is the search term. With “Fauv,” Google already displays the search results. Mayer doesn’t call this “search as you type,” but “search before you type.” It’s about the predictive technology.
9:56: Mayer is talking about a 2000 April Fools Day joke from Google, MentalPlex, which supposedly predicted search
9:57: Available on Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE8 starting today. It rolls out today int he U.S., and it’ll roll out internationally in the next week. UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia if you’re signed into your Google account.
9:58: Now the Google Instant team is on stage. Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management, and Othar Hansson, Senior Staff Software Engineer.
10:00 AM: With one key stroke, “w,” you’ll instantly get your weather forecast. Wow.
10:01: Hansson typed “the gi.” The gray text that appears after what you’ve typed is called the predicted text. In this case, it’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”
10:03: Scroll to search demo. “Yose” predicts Yosemite national park. By pressing the odwn arrow, you can see lodging, maps, camping, weather, etc.
10:06: “What the heck is the search button there for, anyway?” Since search results are instant. If you hit enter, it ends your search where you typed ,rather than what it predicts you’ll type. The same goes for the “Search” button.
10:09: “Caval” gets you the sports team. “Cavalier k” gets you the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.
10:11: Google Instant is coming to mobile this fall! Google is demoing it on a Droid. As you start typing, Google will provide search results instantly, even on mobile.
10:14: “We must do it, and we must do it now.” Ben Gomes is now on stage speaking about the challenges of Google Instant. It’s about UI and UX and making it so that Google Instant doesn’t melt the company’s servers.
10:19: Now Google is discussing the research behind Google Instant. The company is showing off how users look at a webpage, specifically tracking eye movements.
10:20: Google is turning search into an AJAX application. It has done it with Gmail and other apps, but never with search. They’re discussing how Google Instant works. Specifically, how autocomplete search requests are sent automatically to Google’s servers and then predictions and search results page should come back. The experience doesn’t work if the browser takes more time to render the javascript than to send the queries back and forth.
10:23: 20 billion searches per day. The company is talking about why they are scaled for so many searches, when there aren’t even that many people on the planet.
10:24: Optimizations. Prioritizing searches was important to scaling Google Instant.
10:26: It’s a big team that made this happen. They have dozens of faces on the main projector screen. There are also two counters that are increasing from 34,000+. It refers to the hours saved by Google Instant.
Q&A
10:33: Google’s Sergey Brin is on stage with a host of other Googlers.
Q: When will Instant be in the browser?
A: In the next few months, at least for Chrome.
Q: Why can’t you Instant search naughty terms?
A: Same rules apply to protect children. You need to click enter
Q: Datacenter load — how much stress does it put on it?
A: Yes, it increases the load, but the engineering team did a lot to really decrease the server load.
Q: From the web: What is the future of the machine-human relationship?
A: Brin: “I’m also astounded by the rate of innovation in user interfaces.”
Q: Impact on SEO?
A: Basically it stays the same. It’s still the same results, it’s just adapting to behavior.
Q: Do you believe people want faster search?
A: YES!
Q: How will behavior change?
A: Ben: You could do multiple queries, you can quickly check tickets, reviews, etc. by scrolling up and down through search predictions. People are going to explore their topics of interest much more than they do today.
Q: What were the complaints during testing?
A: A very small percentage turned it off.
Q: Was Caffeine integral to Instant?
A: Not directly, but it did help make the index bigger.
Q: Did you think we’d ever reach this point, Sergey?
A: It’s pretty amazing the things we can do today.
Q: How will this affect ads? Will users click more ads?
A: Ads are great part of our user experience.
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Instant Search has been here all day for anyone that wanted to try it out: http://www.google.com/webhp?sclient=psy
Pretty cool!
pretty cool until you realize the repercussions on adwords advertising.
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=187309
3 second hover to count an impression? now watch your CTRs tank, your quality score go into the toilet, and overall CPC’s on adwords campaigns the world over increase. There’s going to be advertiser lashback for sure, but when will the quality score algo change? It would be nice if google spent a little more time reassuring it’s #1 source of revenue – adwords advertisers – that their campaigns were going to be alright.
It’d be nice if google spent a lot more time and energy reassuring their #1 revenue source – adwords advertisers – that their campaigns were going to be alright.
This change has MASSIVE impact on the way adwords works. CTRs will tank as impressions for adwords ads are counted if displayed for 3 seconds or longer in the search process. This means inflated impressions, decreased CTRs, and tanking quality scores. CPCs the world over will go up, and advertisers will bite back. Google will eventually change the algo, but when? not impressed.
Long live the king, I mean Google.
Google is turning into a corporate cheer leader where large companies dominate the rankings (revenue grab? knocking out the small business?). Type “e” and I got: ebay, espn, expedia. “s” – skype, sears, staples. Randomly type 2 letters: “be” – best buy, bed bath and beyond, etc.
What happened to independent results? Someone really needs to come out with an independent search engine that doesn’t sell out to corporations.
Will be incorporated for sites that use Google's Custom Search for their search engines?
Today in Twitter we discussed that Google maybe will present their own social network at this event.
But, as I can see, they won't
I am certain that Google is coming up with a way to read our toughs,search gets even faster?
Leave it to Google to make me feel inferior. This is too awesome
Great, but I use google search through my browsers dedicated search box. I wonder if it will still work without having to first visit google.com first!
Whats google?
Twitter?
The “I'm Feeling Lucky” button is obsolete now. As soon as I type in a letter, it disappears. How am I going to find Chuck Norris now?
Great Play-by-play! Thanks!
Okay, you can turn it off too. Having my google page search every letter I type doesn't make my search faster, I don't know whos logic works like that.
I hate this. I don't need to see Best Buy, Bravo and some other junk while looking for a brake job. Oh yeah, hitting enter makes Google think you are sending automated requests from your browser. I'm sorry, but this is another bad idea from Google. Wave, Buzz, G1 and so on. Keep em coming Google. Wish Apple would come out with a serp. I'm off to Bing.
I completely agree, you can turn it off too. I was about to never visit google.com again but it's easier just to turn it off.
I already have Google Instant. I went to my homepage (which is Google Search) and I discovered that the size of the logo and the search bar were bigger. I started typing something in and suddenly, before I even pressed the Enter key, results started appearing. It reminds me of the search feature in the Windows 7 start menu, when you start typing results appear.
I definitely won't be shutting off Google Instant. :)
Maybe they should work on making results more relevant and eliminate the rank spam links that inhabit their pages.
What Google is doing is great. How you're covering it with such short, timely posts is TERRIFIC.
Thanks!
Charlie Seymour Jr
http://CreateYourOwnLegendNow.com
I am in love with it.
Sign in to google and go to google.com to see it in action.
Google instant is like that person who tries to finish your sentences: Trying to be useful, but mostly just annoying.
Hmmm, Surely this has nothing to do Google trying very hard to get people to click on their ads. Users will not finish typing their query and they will not click on the search button for the search results. This of course causes the suggestion box to stay open while pushing the organic search results down. Time saving could just be a red herring.
Just caught the last half of the panel (what's up with Sergey's shoes he's always wearing). Does anybody know where I can view the entire interview.
Wow, no way dude that is just WAY too cool!
“it’ll roll out internationally in the next week. UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia if you’re signed into your Google account.”
I got news for you, it's already working here in Edinburgh.
Unless Google has made the passage of time more efficient as well and it's now next week already! :-)
I bet they'll start adapting this in their other applications as well… Gmail, Docs, Maps, etc.
Already working here in London too. Not a fan at all. I don't see how providing me with results for “pokemon” if I'm searching for “poker”. In what way is that improving my user experience? It's just unnecessary server load and it slows my page rendering down.
I'll stick with it for a few days, but unless there's something I'm missing, it will be gone soon.
Very nice, impressive even!
The emphasis, of course, is on speed and making the search experience fast.
I like the message that it says about “feeling euphoria and weightlessness” because I was totally confused when I went to Google.com this afternoon..
So what will this do to SEO as we know it?
During the Q&A, they said that SEO will be the same as it always has been.
I'm not too familiar with all that SEO entails, so im curious… What are your first impressions of how Instant will effect SEO?
'Instant doesnt affect paid search' is their claim, but they do agree that it WILL change user search behavior. How does changing user behavior NOT affect paid search?
They say that an impression is now a “3 sec pause”. Thats a change to paid search right there.
For example…
If I start to type “window replacement”, at about “win” i'm getting ads. If i stop to read the results I have for lets say… 4 seconds, all of those ads earn an impression. Then I continue to “window” and I stop for 3 sec. to read what i've got, and now this new ad set have all received impressions as well. –My point is, that I could see 5 different ad sets, and give 3 different impressions all on one search query.
Granted, impressions arent a pivotal stat for adwords, but is it now completely obsolete?
'Instant doesnt affect paid search' is their claim, but they do agree that it WILL change user search behavior. How does changing user behavior NOT affect paid search?
They say that an impression is now a “3 sec pause”. Thats a change to paid search right there.
For example…
If I start to type “window replacement”, at about “win” i'm getting ads. If i stop to read the results I have for lets say… 4 seconds, all of those ads earn an impression. Then I continue to “window” and I stop for 3 sec. to read what i've got, and now this new ad set have all received impressions as well. –My point is, that I could see 5 different ad sets, and give 3 different impressions all on one search query.
Granted, impressions arent a pivotal stat for adwords, but is it now completely obsolete?
It's not working for me in Firefox or Safari logged in or not. It works in IE8 and Chrome when I am logged in to Google. If you have to be logged in for it to work then it is pretty lame.
Here's a list of the Google Instant 1-letter abbreviations: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AqcLXe96ybBEdHhLejJBVEFJRUFJTnFJcXkwM0RMYUE&hl=en
if Bob Dylan's endorsing it, it must be good:
http://bit.ly/bdg6FX
Google rocks……from Akhilesh of http://www.aonergy.com
I showed to my friend once it came out and he was like “no way!” and we both had a nerdgasm…
Did he really answer questions like that? – very strange where some questions were not even answered :-/
Google Instant Launch Event Full Video: http://bit.ly/dpsI74
I like the idea how google search is 10x faster than before if you too like the idea vote for this article on http://blogslash.com/Technology/Google_Instant_Search_Goes_Live
I like it, was very surprised when it first happened in the morning but overall think it's a very good improvement. Not sure how it will affect SEO though!
Well, it certainly freshens up the interface somewhat. I was curious to see how there were going handle displaying ads on the splash page if the results where going to pop up in the extended search box drop down, only to see that they got around that by typing the first letter initiates a jump to the ad laden search results page!
With all the tangential suggestions, and therefore listings of other sites OTHER than the things I am actually searching for, I may find myself more distracted by those, and therefore not save any time!
I wrote a post about how these disparate suggestions remind me of the way my grandmother's brian works here http://www.limeyboy.com/blog/2010/09/google-instant-hang-on-a-minute/
Well its certainly freshened up the interface. All the suggested sites it anticipates will work well with the big name sites, a is for amazon, e is for ebay, however google can be distracting enough as it is without these suggestions to lure me aware on another tangent!
I wrote a blog post about how the suggestions remind me of how my grandmother's brain works… http://www.limeyboy.com/blog/2010/09/google-instant-hang-on-a-minute/
Now this is Awesome.
I'm thinking that their predictive search will be more greater and will save us more time as Google search for results before we type. This will sure speed and ease our works at least.
I really appreciate this article and pretty excited for this to lauched. Thanks for posting!
Charlie Seymour Jr
http://PersonalSuccessMarketing.com
But what about how some companies will benefit from increased branding and just single letter searches. For example, typing in “p” brings up PayPal.
I've got the whole Google Instant Alphabet search listed here on an article I've written.
http://pglewis.co.uk/google/2010/09/the-google-instant-alphabet-of-search
Very true Kyle. A lot of advertisers will suffer because of the decreased quality scores. It’ll take a lot of complaining to make them realize that they are hurting the quality scores of their “customers” to finally change it.
However, overall you might see more clicks on ads that wouldn’t have been clicked on as they look as they type. Still, the impression rate of 3 seconds needs to be upped and only counted until a click has been made on the page to be sure that the person was done searching.
more ad clicks aren’t necessarily helpful, either – adwords is all about qualified traffic. If you just get random clicks on your ads, your ROI goes down the toilet. but that means more billable clicks for google!