• Search Engine Land, Tuesday, September 21, 2010 10:44 AM

Since its debut earlier this month, there's been no shortage of opinions surrounding Google's Instant search feature, which dynamically refreshes search results (within the search box itself) as users enter search terms. Rather than an SEO killer or search game changer, Matt Van Wagner, founder and president of search engine marketing firm Find Me Faster, just calls Instant an "amazing" PR win for Google.

"With just a press conference and a few well-placed interviews, Google has parlayed this relatively minor speed improvement into an attention-grabbing front-page news story," Van Wagner writes in Search Engine Land. "From the looks of it, the announcement of Google Instant appears to have been a very effective countermove to Microsoft's $100 million dollar ad campaign that was supposed to establish Bing as the better, faster way to search." Adds Van Wagner: "The irony of the Google Instant announcement is that Google is essentially usurping one of Bing's core competitive advantages -- the time it takes to complete a successful search session."

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