Is Google Instant 3D for search results?

I've just been watching the launch video for Google's latest game changing tool Google Instant. Google Instant is touted as being able to provide even faster search results as you type in your topic of interest into the search box. Basically, as you type, results appear below. It is not currently available in Australia, but you can try it out on Google.com (you may need to log into your Google account to access this).




We could look at it something like:

• 1D search - this is the days when we typed a phrase into the search box and hit search for e.g. "latest weather forecast for Sydney Australia" [Search]. 
• 2D search  - this could be likened to typing in that same topic but just as "weather Sydney" and hitting [Enter]. We would then receive enhanced results based on Sydney Australia, as the server picked up the location of our IP address, and assumed we wanted the coming week's forecast so it displayed weather visuals for the next week, along with possible links to related news for that term and location.
• 3D search - in comes Google Instant, whereby you can edit your search on the fly as you type. So you may be looking for the latest movie and type in 'Iron Man 2' but as you type you see that this term results in movie trailer results so you extend your phrase to include 'movie t'. Then you receive all the movie times for your area based on where you are searching from. You possibly did 2 or 3 searches in that one search query.

For the most part, I think the new feature is quite exciting. I believe time will tell whether it is something that the Internet community will adopt or potentially find distracting. I am leaning more towards it being an adopted feature as we do not have to change the physical steps to type in a search, it is merely removing a step i.e. hitting the [Enter] key, to get results. If we want to revert to our existing way of using search we can, and there is the option of turning off Instant.

Historically, if we venture back to how we've used the Internet over the years, speed is definitely one of the greatest desires ... more bandwidth ... faster page loading .... so quicker access to a desired search results seems like a natural next step for search engines. I am not sure anyone has pinpointed exactly how this will impact SEO for the time being, except that it will keep SEO advisors on their toes. It seems that your organic ranking is now more important than ever.

I think my deciding factor will lay with my father - he is the complete opposite of a computer savvy searcher. About 6 months ago, I was showing him, how to find something on the Internet using Google. And while his typing was slow; one key press, looking down at the keyboard then looking up at the screen to check it was the correct key and then back down at the keyboard to press the next key and so on, he instantly took notice of the predictive search results Google was listing for him as he typed. In fact, I think my father's slow typing made it even easier for him to understand the predictive results feature. So my father will be my benchmark for Instant. If he finds it useful and easy to find the best fishing spots in NSW, then I'm sold :-)