Thu, 09 Sep 2010 10:35p.m.
By James Murray
Every day at 9:30am, 3news.co.nz chief editor James Murray will look at Google Trends. He will write a blog about whatever comes up as the number one Hot Topic. He will do this for at least a month at which point he will have a mental health check-up. Except at the moment he checks between 10am and 11am in an effort to avoid minor US sports stars
Today’s search term was, rather amusingly Google Instant not working.
But what is Google Instant? It is search that gives you results based on what you are most likely to be searching for based on the letter you are typing.
Google have a good desription of how it works here.
Presumably, plenty of people have got a bit frustrated with the new system. Embarrassingly for Google if you now type Google into normal Google search, the top suggested term is also Google Instant not working.
It is only available in a few countries at present, but this morning 3 News found out Google Instant is working in New Zealand.
To get it to work simply log in to your Google account and then go to Google.com. You will be redirected to Google.co.nz, but just underneath the search box you will see a link that says “Go to Google.com” – click on that and the magic begins.
In the interests of science I am going to see who the big winners are and see which sites come up as the top search term for each of the letters of the alphabet.
Click on the letters below to see the results.
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
So, a powerful collection of some of the world’s biggest websites awaits those doing the alphabet test on Google Instant. Something perturbs me about the way search engines are moving. In their quest to be more and more convenient for users they are potentially becoming less and less useful to their clients – the businesses people are searching for.
It is, of course, imperative for any business starting up today to take on good search engine optimisation practice. But with Google second guessing what people are looking for and giving back a list of the most popular sites without the user even finishing their sentence, what hope is there for the new starter. Aren’t we in danger of stifling innovation and creating a large disincentive to enter the online market.
Google would do well to have some sort of filter for new sites, they could call it Google Innovate and web entrepreneurs would have something to aim for.
At present, Google is busy setting up global monopolies – who can compete with Amazon for online book sales, who could rival Ikea for confusing and mundane flatpack furniture and perhaps most tellingly, who could rival Google as the global choice for search engines.