Here, we try to answer all these questions, by pointing to different resources around the web.

What is Google Instant?

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. It uses Google’s autocomplete technology to show predicted search terms in a drop-down box, and begins to display search results below the drop-down. They say it’s going to transform search forever—making it faster, better, stronger. As Gizmodo says, Google Instant is nothing but predictive search which will show a range of possible queries in grey to refine your options, all before you ever hit the “Search” button.

Google says there are three benefits to using Instant:

faster searches (it saves 2-5 seconds per search according to Google research), smarter predictions that help guide user searches, and instant results that let the searcher see results without clicking a search button or pressing enter.

Google Instant only works for searchers in the US or who are logged in to a Google account in selected countries outside the US. According to official announcement, In order to turn on Instant search, you can go to your Preferences page and make sure Google Instant search is On by default. If you don’t yet see it, you can try enabling it via this special URL: http://www.google.com/webhp?sclient=psy What more? Google says Instant will be automatically disabled when they can detect that a searcher has a slow internet connection. It won’t work from browser search box, Google toolbar, mobile browsers, iGoogle and SSL search.

Learning from the previous disaster when they launched Google Buzz, Google has provided ways to turn off Google Instant by just a couple of clicks. In fact there are two ways to do so-

  1. Look for “Instant is on” link on the right of the search box and click on it to toggle between on and off.

  2. Visit the search preferences page and look for “Google Instant” at the bottom.

Google Instant – How it works?

The video below explains that

May be you can also check this article from Gorumors or this one from Freeblogin.

Will Google Instant “Kill SEO” or Impact Rankings?

This is a million dollar question. You can check out the views from different SEO experts around the web, which I have listed below.

Google Instant makes SEO irrelevant – Steve Rubel How Will Google Instant Affect Your Company’s SEO? – RWW Thoughts on Google Instant – Matt Cutts Google Instant will change — not kill — SEO – econsultancy Google Instant: Impact on Search queries – Webmaster Central blog

If you care for my opinion, Instant search will definitely impact SEO and those ranking for top 3 results are bound to get more hits and traffic than ever before.

Google Instant Search Tricks & Interesting Links

People around the web were quick enough to intelligently trick/tweak/use Google Instant search. Check out some of them below –

  1. How to Get a Weather Report Using Google Instant – Just press “w” and you will notice the weather report instantly, thanks to localization of search results.
  2. How to make Google Instant work in Opera – Opera user? no reason to fret!
  3. “Instant Elements” using Google Instant Search – Google Instant search meme has started
  4. The ABCs According To Google Instant
  5. How to track Google Instant in Google Analytics – for all you webmasters
  6. Google Instant is fast but doesn’t improve search quality – I kind of agree with what Mani is saying here.
  7. The Second Search Box at Google Goes Missing – not sure why Google decided to take off the search box at the bottom of the page How did you like this article? Feel free to comment below and voice your opinion on the article as well as what’s your take on Google Instant search. Find some more interesting stuff on the web? Share it with us and yeah, share this article with your friends and followers!

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