Thank You, Google Instant, For The Gift of Nearly One Full Hour

Remember the introduction of Google Instant? It was launched in early fall 2010.  As you recall,  Google Instant is a search enhancement that shows search results as you type.

I found it quite distracting at first, and now hardly notice it. In fact, it’s an expected feature.

The brainiacs at Google did study after study and found that on average, people take 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only milliseconds to glance at another part of the page.

They figured users scan search results page as they type. Heck, they figured correctly!

Don’t you find you often get the right content much faster than before because you have been “trained” not to finish typing a full search term, or even press “search?”

If I Could Turn Back Time

So by predicting my search and showing results before I finish typing, the Google smarty-pants assure me that Google Instant saves 2-5 seconds per search.

OK so here’s where math skills take over.

20 Average Searches Per Day

Between work-related, family and personal tasks, I guestimate I perform between 15 – 25 Google searches per day. Emphasis on the word “guestimate”….(Note:  this data is hard to find, so let’s just use this number. In fact I likely performed an over-average number of Google searches just searching for  “average number of searches one person performs in one day”)

Back to the math…(Thanks, Colleen of Sullivan Leh Designs, for checking me on this...) 

100 Seconds Saved Per Day

So if on average I perform about 20 searches a day, with a savings of 5 seconds per search with Google Instant, average daily savings total 100 seconds each day with Google Instant.

11.5 Minutes Saved Per Week

In a given week, that’s 700 seconds, or about 11.5 minutes saved.  

50 Minutes Saved Per Month

So last month, I saved a total of about 50 minutes.   (By golly, that’s 10 hours savings per year! Can’t wait for 2011!)

The Gift of Time

Sincere thanks to Google Instant for saving me about 1 hour last month, what a gift! 

Unfortunately that hour was wasted coming up with this blog posting. Ah, the irony.