My Best Toys

Who, what, why, when?

Google has launched a new search offering on Wednesday called Google Instant, here are six bite-sized nuggets of information to get you behind the key questions you’ll probably have so you can impress your mates when they ask you what Google Instant is all about when you’re down the pub.

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How can Google Instant be so fast?

It’s magic. No really, Google uses what you are typing to work out possible words that you are going to type. So if you type “The Girl”, before you’ve got to the end of what you are typing it already knows that’s what you want and finishes the search off for you - in most cases “The Girl with the Dragon?Tattoo”. If that’s not the right search you can scroll down through the suggestions with the arrow keys on your keyboard or tab to complete the search.

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Can I turn Google Instant off?

You will be able to turn off Google Instant, however you’ll have to do so by logging into Google and selecting in the Preference page.

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Can I play with Google Instant today?

If you use the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia domains and use Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8.

If you don’t then you won’t be getting in today. Google has said that new domains and languages over the next several months.

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Will Google Instant work with any Internet connection?

“We anticipate that Google Instant will not slow your Internet connection, and we plan to automatically turn it off for very slow connections,” says Google. That means that when rendering new results as you type, Google say they will load the page by only sending the parts of the page that change, without updating the static elements, such as a the page frame around the results. In reality that means you shouldn’t notice any difference.

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Can I search for naughty words in Google Instant?

Of course and realising that you might be doing so Google automatically hides the instant results. Typing the word “fuck” for example delivers a blank page prompting you to press the enter key before it covers your page in swear words. As before you can choose to set SafeSearch to filter out explicit content, and parents can lock SafeSearch to the strict setting.

In addition, autocomplete excludes certain terms related to pornography, violence and hate speech.

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I want Google Instant on Mobile, is that possible?

No. It’s desktop only at the moment. Google has said later this year.

Tags:
Online Software Google Google Instant Search engines Features

Google Instant: Six things to know originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:05:00 +0100