Thunderbolt Digital house a number of extremely talented web designers in Surrey, and as such like to keep out finger on the pulse of the latest industry news; we especially like to keep an eye on Google, as any change made by them is something that generally affects everyone online, especially our clients! So what has Google been up to recently? It seemed that removed a key feature from their search engine – but have you even noticed?
The end of July also marks the end of Google Instant, a very familiar but often overlooked element of the search engine giant. Google Instant was launched seven years ago in 2010 in an effort to make the search process more efficient and save time wasted from slow typing. In fact, Google Instant is thought to have saved 2-5 seconds per search!
So why has something like this been retired? It’s all to do with shifting user bases; Google instant made sense back in 2010 when the majority of searches were made on desktop, but 2015 onwards has since seen mobile devices take the majority of searches, and Google instant is now something of a hindrance on mobile due to layout, formatting, and bandwidth.
Google Instant being removed is just another instance of the company rolling out changes to keep up with user needs and well as the shift from desktop to mobile; the way people use and interact things slowly change and evolve over time, so websites and companies must too.
So, what sort of changes can you expect to see from Google Instant’s removal? Google suggestions (AKA auto fill) will still appear when you search for something, but real time refreshing during typing will stop and results will not load unless you select them. which will be a relief for many on limited data plans!
It seems that many will not miss this feature or even notice it’s gone (would you have noticed without reading this article?) but the removal of Google Instant is hoped by the company to make the experience on mobile more ‘fluid’ and give the search engine a more consistent design across platforms.