Google tests ‘streaming’ results pages
August 24th, 2010 by Geoff
Talk has turned to a new feature that Google is said to be testing regarding search results. Rob Ousbey, was the first to learn that Google has been testing a new instant search feature. This effectively means that it is streaming search results as and when the user types, this then dynamically changes as the user continues to complete the search field. The streaming appears to use Google Suggest technology to change the whole search results page based on how your query changes.
A spokesperson from Google will neither confirm nor deny the test. A representative from Google told Techcrunch that “at any given time we are running between 50-200 search experiments.”
Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala explained how he thought that this instant search feature would put a lot of pressure on Google’s systems. Google handles approximately a billion searches every day, if dynamically changing search results were to be integrated on top of this it could put a lot of strain on the systems running in the background.
“I think it would initially (add a lot of system stress) so they might face some short-term pain to get the longer term gain,” Kerravala said. “Google has built out a tremendously robust infrastructure. And my guess is that with their resources, thought, if (the new feature) became a big hit, other search engines would have a hard time keeping up.”
For months and months now Industry analysts have noted that Google’s ongoing battle for majority market share with Microsoft’s Bing search engine is continuing to bring waves of innovation. Showing their commitment to the end goal, Google has revealed real-time search in recent months, along with personalised search results and Google Goggles, a photo based search, and we are sure these developments will continue.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the
RSS feed.
Link to us
If you want to link to this blog, copy and paste the following HTML code to your website.
