Just two days ago I wrote about Google's push into the music-streaming market, questioning its continuous expansion into new ventures while ignoring its biggest strength as a search engine.
That's why I was glad to hear that the Google Instant launch yesterday was aimed at bettering its search capabilities, because it's Google's power as a search engine that has made it the cultural icon that it is.
Basically, Google Instant allows more search results with less typing. For instance, if you type in the letter "a" the first result is Amazon.com and typing in "w" will bring up Weather.com. And although it's just been launched, Google Instant is getting pretty positive reviews.
Obviously I had to try it out for myself before passing judgment, and was pleased with what I found. The results that pop up aren't just the globally popular ones like eBay and Facebook, but seem to take your search habits and location into account. Typing in "x" not only brings up XBox but Minnesota giant Xcel Energy as well (it actually listed Xcel Energy ahead of XBox), while "v" brings up both Verizon and Valleyfair. The top 5 results for "d" even included Dakota County where I live.
The implications here could be big, both from a consumer and business standpoint. For consumers it means less typing for presumably better results. Also, the affect of Google Instant on SEO for businesses is being heavily debated. Some are claiming Google Instant will kill SEO while others saying it will improve it, and Google's Matt Cutts wrote a great blog post about it.
So I'll give Google Instant my stamp of approval for now, although it has yet to be integrated with the browser. But more importantly, the launch of Google Instant shows that Google isn't forgetting what made them famous by re-focusing on search capabilities.
