Google Instant search for Mobile coming soon

“Googling” just turned super-fast (no, we’re not talking about your Internet speeds). Mountain View, California-based search giant just accelerated what it does best with a search-as-you-type option and Wednesday announced its latest innovation, Google Instant. And the company says Google Instant Search is coming to mobile phones too, very soon.

As with most great ideas, the thought behind Google Instant is simple enough – get search results while you type your queries. The implementation, well, that’s where Google’s expertise comes in.

Instead of focusing on providing users with page suggestions based on partial typing (for example, displaying results for “music p” while searching for “music players”), Google Instant predicts what the user might be looking for, completes the query in light gray text and displays relevant results as a drop-down list.

Google Instant differs from the query suggestions that Google already provides because a user no longer needs to complete typing his/her query, hit Enter or click on the Search button to get results. Thus, users reach their destination links much faster.

At present, Google Instant works on Google.com for Chrome (versions 5/6), Firefox (version 3), Safari (version 5) for Mac and Internet Explorer (version 8). It is available on Google Instant-capable browsers to users in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the U.K. (provided users are signed in to their Google accounts).

Google has confirmed that it will expand the reach of Google Instant search to Web browsers on mobile phones as early as fall. As one can imagine, Google Instant will be mighty useful on a mobile, where typing is much more cumbersome and time-consuming.

The company gave a demo at its conference Wednesday of the mobile version of Google Instant. The demo on a Motorola Droid handset indicated that Instant will have no compatibility issues with browsers on Android-based phones. Whether it will run on the iPhone’s Safari has not yet been confirmed. Google Instant for Mobile phones is likely to be launched first on Android phones, we think. Pretty soon, Instant search should come to iPhone too.

Video of Google Instant for Mobile phones

Google tests indicate that an average searcher can save from two to five seconds per search with Google Instant (on an average, users can take between 9-90 seconds to enter a search term). Sounds like a tiny bit but can add up to about 11 hours of saved time with each passing second, which is more than 3.5 billion seconds a day!

Google realized that users have slow typing speeds (about 300 milliseconds between keystrokes), but read much quicker (only 30 milliseconds – a tenth of the typing time) to check out other parts of a page. Google Instant was a result of this insight.

Converting the vision to reality took a little more work. Google developed enhanced caching systems and new technologies that would control the rate at which results pages would be shown. It also optimized page-rendering JavaScript to help browsers keep pace with the rest of the system. The goal was to create a system that was simple, user-friendly and could search as fast as users think and type. In all, it took Google 15 new technologies to power Google Instant.

Google Instant for Mobile works well over Wi-Fi and 3G and not all that well over EGDE

Other than speed, Google Instant helps users refine their queries as they view suggested search strings while they type. Useful when you’re not completely sure of what you’re looking for.

Google Instant will be available on the regular Google domain but not on individually designed “iGoogle” pages, which are anyway loaded with other third-party widgets.

Google Instant for Mobile screenshot

Google Instant for Mobile phones by Fall 2010

Google Instant search for Mobile phones will work pretty much in a similar fashion. But there could be some restrictions, such as 3G connection speeds, a missing tab button on devices and incompatibility with certain mobile devices. The company said that Google Instant for mobile phones would appear in 2010 Fall. Remember that Google already has a Voice Search on Android mobile phones – Google Instant for Mobile would co-exist with it.

Google Instant search for mobile screenshot

According to some reports, Google Instant for Mobile works well over Wi-Fi thanks to the higher speeds and ‘pretty well’ over 3G. Normal GPRS or EDGE speeds are much lower, and it may be quite a bit slow. Google Instant search results use AJX for constant communication with Google’s servers, which most mobile networks are not ready for.

Google offers the option of switching off Google Instant search for those who find it a tad distracting (just click on the link next to the search box or switch it off from your Preferences page). Users can also make use of the Safe Search option (again under Preferences) to opt out of explicit or violent query suggestions.

GigaOM commented that Google Instant is quite a bit like a mobile app, as the search results it produces are quite personalized and will use your web history in the future.

Those worried about this enhancement eating up their Internet speeds can relax as Google insists that the additional load of Google Instant is very small and will not adversely affect your browsing experience in any way.

There was a demo page for Google Instant for Mobile which is not working anymore. But thanks to Androinica, we have some screenshots of what Google Instant looks like on mobile here for you.

Google claims that Google Instant will not affect the search-engine ranking of websites but there are concerns of smaller companies/websites being overshadowed as page suggestions will draw heavily from popular search requests. So, if a user is thrown links to popular pages while he types a search query, he/she is most likely to pick one out of those suggestions rather than exploring other options.

Despite the (few) concerns, Google Instant is likely to transform search as we know it today, bordering on “mind-reading” capabilities.

At the very least, the company hopes to retain its two-thirds share in the search market – over one-third combined market share of Yahoo and Microsoft – with Google Instant.

By speeding up the number of search requests (and thereby increasing their volume), Google Instant also seems to be good news for the company’s own ad sales too as online ads make up about $30 billion of Google’s annual revenue. Our first impressions of Google Instant search though is that this would take away the focus from Google’s own adwords listings on the top and right. A user, using Google Instant, is likely to be so impressed by the instant results and might click one so fast that he may not notice the adwords links on the right. But guess we have to wait and see.

In the months to come, Google hopes to roll out Google Instant to more geographies and platforms.

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