Google has decided to do away with Google Instant Search. The reason for the culling is to make sure search is more compatible with mobile devices.  There’s not much time to dwell on the old feature, as the removal of Google Search came into effect as of July 26, 2017.

Google Instant Search provided users of the search engine with instant answers that would show up as you typed. It was launched in 2010 as Google was hoping to speed up the search process for their users.   It was claimed that 3.5 billion seconds could be saved each day if everyone used the feature.  At the time Marissa Mayer was at the head of the Search team and she saw Google Instant search to be a fundamental shift in how search functioned.

Over 50% of Google Searches Take Place on Mobile Devices

Move on to the present day and things have changed. More than 50% of searches on Google take place on a mobile device. Google Instant Search doesn’t work as well on a mobile device as it does on a desktop, so it needs to go. Mobile users have different interactions compared with desktop users. The space available is extremely limited, even with ‘larger’ screen devices. Google hopes that in the future search will become a lot more fluid on all devices.

Nothing to See Here

Mobile users won’t notice anything different as it has never been available on mobile. Desktop users will notice that they are provided with search suggestions that can be clicked if they want to see the results. Pages will not be loaded the result pages unless the user decides to click on the search suggestion or click enter.