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."

Fix Image Search first!!

[cfryback]

Can someone tell them to turn off the BING image view. Sorry, we're in the third world of Australia, and searching images is no, just epic FAIL.

Re:Why?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Did you mean "cheese and biscuits" or "cheese + biscuits"?

I personally saw this

[LeiraHoward]

My google page did this sometime this past week. I wasn't logged in, it just randomly started doing it as part of the test... Personally, I hate it.

You know how when you normally type in things, Google "suggests" what you might be looking for? And how, sometimes, those searches are, shall we say, "interesting" to say the least, or "NSFW" or just plain old weird? (For instance, try typing in "How do I" or "how do you" and see the odd results that occur... the ones I currently see are "get pregnant" and "start selling weed").

Now, imagine having the results of those show up as you're trying to search for something else entirely.

Frustrating, to say the least, and embarrassing or potentially job-threatening on some of those more risque searches.

In depth search

[belthize]

I wish they'd do the opposite. Admittedly getting results for many searches in 1.342 seconds is cool but occasionally I'd prefer much more specific results even if it takes minutes or longer. If they had a service that charged a few $/month that allowed for complex regex and context based searches I'd probably pay it without a seconds thought.

Re:Why?

[Ephemeriis]

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"?

From the point of view of a website looking for hits, there's more opportunity to come up in a search result. Joe's Cheese Emporium might not come up when you search for "cheese and biscuits", but it could come up as you typed out your search and had just "cheese" in there. This is a good thing if you're running a website.

From the point of view of a user searching for information, you never know exactly what search terms are going to be relevant. Maybe I'm being too specific in my search terms and not getting any results, but if I omit some term I get exactly what I'm looking for. Right now I have to do several searches to find that out. If it's searching as I type I can just delete terms and see what comes up. Hell, I might not even need to finish typing out my search term. Maybe just typing out "cheese and b" is enough to get results for sites about "cheese and biscuits".

seizure time

[giantism_strikes]

I personally can't wait to see Google seizure between every word I type in. Great idea guys... How annoying would it be if someone tried to answer a question that you were asking after every word you said?

Re:In depth search

[Hercynium]

I suggest you try https://duckduckgo.com/ [duckduckgo.com] for searches like that - regexes, content categories, site-specific, all sorts of "goodies".

It hasn't replaced Google's other search modes for me, but feels like the first real good competitor for the standard web-search.

And BTW, They cater well to the privacy-concerned - they don't keep any info on you, use a redirect to remove your search terms when you click on a result, and will gladly operate over SSL for anything