Google Instant - A Digital Marketing Mystery Just Waiting To Be Solved

Lately, digital marketing specialists have spent many hours testing Google Instant, a new search feature added to the Google search engine. If you have not run a search on Google.com for a long time, you should consider stopping by to test this new digital marketing feature.

Google Instant helps users by guessing what a user is searching for, from the very first alphabet they type in the search box. For example, if a searcher types in a 'W', they will be able to view details about Walmart in an instant, before having to enter the remaining letters that spell 'Walmart'.

Most single letters produce stores that are well known for conducting digital marketing activities, such as Amazon, Best Buy, Craigslist and eBay. However, for the alphabet 'D', a list of dictionaries shows up. To get a company beginning with the letter 'D' to show up, you'll have to type two letters, either 'de' for delta, or 'di' for Disney.

According to Google executives, Google Instant was created after determining that people type slowly, but read quickly. Through a study they discovered that it typically takes around 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (one-tenth of the time) to skim through a page. Digital marketing experts are sure that this study must have cost a huge amount, but learning about how much time would be saved per search (2-5 seconds) makes the study well worth the cost.

As digital marketing professionals, let's take a look at a few examples of queries being completed by Google Instant:

1. If you type in "how does", you get a result like "how does Facebook make money".

2. If you type in "why can't", you are shown results for "why can't we be friends".

3. If you type in "why are", you get a results page that shows "why are Egyptians protesting".

The results page displayed by Google Instant is usually one of the top terms beginning with those letters, which is currently being searched by Internet users.

Moreover, if a digital marketing expert types in random letters, they may get relevant results that they never thought existed. For instance, typing in 'sdls' shows results for 'Antarctic Seismic Data Library System (SDLS)'. Also, when you type in 'slfgd', Google would ask you if you meant 'slgfd', and display a page showing results for 'slgfd', which means Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile P8600.

With Google Instant, Google has created a 'third half of your brain', that helps locate what you are searching for even before you can type it in. This third half is expected to grow stronger everyday, bringing even more changes to the way we do digital marketing in the future.

Qudos Digital is a leading digital marketing agency and can be contacted on 020 8891 2077 or info@qudosdigital.co.uk.

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