Google instant search engine

As a Googe anorak, Google is my search engine of choice.

I never use Google directly from Google.co.uk or Google.com but from Chrome, where the url place is also the search place all in one, so I miss out on the instant-instant return of actual search results. However, it does do that thing of offering predictive type suggestions. You still have to press return to get the actual results lists, though.

I tried out the instant thing from Google.com itself and was amazed. The computing speed for that must be fantastic. I'm so impressed. I hope they incorporate it into Chrome as it's almost like reading your mind!

I tend to use the browser search box as well rather than going to Google directly. I am impressed with Instant Google though and hope it's a success.

Do you use one box for typing in Searches and another box for typing in urls? If so, why? :)

Christopher England <(Address removed)> said:

Simon Crees <(Address removed)> said:

I tend to use the browser search box as well rather than going to Google
directly.

Do you use one box for typing in Searches and another box for typing in
urls? If so, why? :)

Because thats the only way you can do it in Internet explorer and since that has always been the case since IE had a search box i just do it automatically. It's just logical to me to have the two seperate in just the same way as the addressee is on the top line of a postal adress and the postcode is at the bottom - putting it all on the same line would seem confusing. I read that IE9 will combine the search and URL boxes like on Chrome so confusion will prevail. How long has Joe public been trying to type URL's into Google for, only to be presented with a load of probably wrong options. Now the industry will have the explain to everyone again that actually you can type either into the address bar - unless they have already been using Chrome of course. I suspect that Joe public will on the whole still have Google search as their home page and type everything into that as they always have done. It's that same issue again - people don't like change.



I think since IE7, you've been able to put search words into the url box anyway, and they left the search box as a separate to sort of retro-fit it and stop people being frightened.

With Chrome, after a few weeks it has completely learned the regular places you go so you never need to type in a url, just start and it's there alongside the suggestions for if you're not looking for a site but searching for a keyword ('Googling').

I'm so used to this that I find it quite strange to have different boxes for what, in Google's (and, I suppose, my own) eyes, are essentially the same thing - either 'searching' for a site or 'searching' for a keyword. I'm not saying it's 'best' or 'better', but I personally am so 'trained' by it that I find it faster. It's a bit like the fact that every computer I have operates on 'single clicks' for things like, say, the icons on a desktop. I don't get why people want to use two clicks (Hey, why don't they make it ten clicks!) to start something. Links on the net are a single click, so why not everything a single click? Likewise, why not combine the url search and word search into one?

Last year I was waiting somewhere where this late 50s lady of the old school was a receptionist. I noticed her homepage was the Yahoo search engine on IE7 or 8. She wanted to look for something. She typed "Google.com" into the Yahoo search on-line box. This offered her Google.com (obviously), which she clicked on to go to. Once Google had loaded she then did her search via Google.

All this despite there being a search bar on the browser. Turns out, every url she ever wanted to go to she'd type into Yahoo first. She didn't know you could write into the url box ("because it already has writing in it"), and had no idea what the browser's search box was.

So, lovely lady, but she just didn't 'get' what she was actually doing. I suspect this is very typical.