Twitter Has Become a News Platform

Twitter has become a form of media, whether that is helpful to traditional media, or not; whether people like it or not.

Twitter is a publishing tool, and shows again how IP-based technologies, the Internet and the Web are transforming any number of legacy businesses, from retailing to telecommunications to video and music to education.

Like It or Not, Twitter Has Become a News Platform

Google Instant Will Save 350 Million Hours Of User Time Per Year

Productivity is hard to measure, but Google engineer Ben Gomes points out that Google serves up billions of queries every day, and that the average query length is 20 characters and the average time for a user to pick a result takes 15 seconds.

Google’s latest feature launch is all about speeding up this process.

“Google Instant will save 350 million hours of user time, over a year,” says Google VP Marissa Mayer. basing her estimate on a figure of each instant search saving two to five seconds of user time, in places where Google Instant is rolled out.

Google Instant Will Save 350 Million Hours Of User Time Per Year

Is Google Instant A Revolution in Search?

Google Instant will become the core search experience on Google.com for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE 8. It also will be offered to users in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the U.K. who are signed in and have Instant-capable browsers. Over the coming weeks and months, Google Instant will berolled to all geographies and platforms.

Google Search Impressions Will Change Because of "Google Instant"

As Google Instant rolls out widely, the raw number of ads displayed per query will inevitably increase as Google displays a sequence of best guesses about its users' desired queries and shows results for the top guess.

For example, a search for 'a' displays results and ads for Amazon.com; an 'e' search does the same for eBay.com. That is going to require some tweaking of what an "impression" is.

To qualify as an impression, an ad exposure must last for at least three seconds, Google now says.

Even with that calculation in place, the effective click-through rate experienced by many Google advertisers may change.

Google Instant Will Impact Search Ads and SEO

Google Unveils Instant Mobile Search

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as users type. Google's key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page.

The most obvious change is that users should get to the right content much faster than before because they don’t have to finish typing a full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as one types helps people formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. Users can adapt their searches on the fly until the results match exactly what they want. 

Google Instant can save 2 seconds to 5 seconds per search, Google estimates. The new algorithms also will make smarter predications about what any user might be looking for. 

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Using Google Instant

Google Instant is largely about accurately predicting what a user is looking for, allowing you to stop typing before completing the thought. Google says this can save two to five seconds per search, but if you're a fast typist and smart searcher, it's probably less.

Still, having your thoughts completed by a machine and the results automatically delivered is different.

Using Google Instant: 5 Quick Takeaways

Google Instant Makes SEO Irrelevant

Google's new "Google Instant" search refinement might have direct implications for search engine optimization, in fact eliminating much of the value of bothering with SEO.

With Google Instant, no two people will see the same web. Until now, a single search would return the same results for a particular search query, to anybody who typed the same query. That's what made search engine optimization work.

If people start tweaking their searches in real-time, behavior will change, lessening the odds that multiple users will type exactly the same search terms.

Google Instant means no one will see the same web anymore, making optimizing it virtually impossible. Real-time feedback will change and personalize people's search behaviors, says Steve Rubel.

Google Instant Makes SEO Irrelevant