Google Testing Instant Search Feature

adeelarshad82 writes "According to a recently released video, Google is currently testing an 'instant search' feature that changes search results as you type. The feature was first spotted over the weekend. At the moment Instant Search seems to be implemented on very few accounts. A Google spokesman could not confirm or deny the accuracy of the video saying that at any given moment Google is running 50 to 200 experiments."

Incremental find

[lyinhart]

So... incremental find for a search engine index? Might be one of the few new "experiments" from Google that turns out to be useful.

Why?

[Stratoukos]

I see absolutely no point in this. While it looks cool, why would I want to see results for "chee", "cheese" or "cheese and b" when I'm searching for "cheese and biscuits"?

It has a name

[robi5]

It's called incremental search and was introduced in the emacs text editor decades ago.

A better invention would be to return relevant search results.

A useful feature

[hcs_$reboot]

That would be a valuable addition.
Currently, many people rely on the word-completion from the search bar. For instance, one prefers to chose what comes from the propositions, since the results will be more numerous.
With this new feature one can adapt in real time the search pattern to converge towards the desired results.

Re:Fix Image Search first!!

[Animaether]

Disable javascript on images.google.com/* ?

Re:Why?

[ByOhTek]

Searching for Dickens could also provide some... undesirable side effects. Especially considering Google's habit of putting pictures in normal search results.

Ad Impressions

[dmomo]

Does each ad that pops up during this phase count as an "impression"? This would really screw with the Advertisers.

Re:Fix Image Search first!!

[Idiomatick]

New image search is a nice improvement. BUT the new links you get aren't as nice. Somehow they seem slower loading for me.

Why not actually load the page they are on and attach a little bit of code to stick the image over-top. if you click the x hide everything instantly. Why reload the whole god damn page?

Re:A useful feature

[Idbar]

I don't know about this and how would it work for them. As you just said many people rely on auto-completion (including me). Automatically returning results could probably mean that eventually the suggested auto-completion would be all incomplete because people never required to search for the whole thing, thus, suggestions may not only not be accurate but completely unintelligible.

Re:Why?

[tverbeek]

Just try explaining to the cyber police that you were just starting to type in a search for "child portraiture studios" when all of those naughty pictures showed up on your computer.

Re:Ad Impressions

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought advertisers paid for clicks, not impressions?