 Google is constantly adding features and enhancements to all of their applications, and the search engine results pages are no exception. Most recently, or not so recently depending on who you talk to, Google has been experimenting with "enhancing" their SERPs to improve the speed of the results and performance in general. This enhancement uses Asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX - don't worry if you don't know what that is) to serve this content dynamically.
Should I be excited or worried?
Both...
By using AJAX, Google can provide results much faster by placing more load on the user's browser and less on Google servers, requesting only the search results and nothing else (like reloading surrounding page elements). Using AJAX will decrease bandwidth and speed up all aspects of search from loading the results, to making search suggestions, or even loading paginated results (i.e. Page 2 of the results) or cached pages. Of course, this is only going to work well for modern browsers that support AJAX fully (and properly); users with legacy browsers might actually experience impeded performance.
The scary part for many is the fact that, since Google is loading content via AJAX, the URL created for the search is appended by a hash (#), rather than a question mark (?) which is standard parameter query syntax. This means that it is not actually changing the URL, and it is not triggering any of the analytics tracking that you would normally pick up with a standard parameter-based query in Google. In lay terms, this means that you might actually lose the ability to track items such as search terms (keywords), number of results and maybe even source (i.e. google.ca vs google.com). If this is the case, there is going to be a huge amount of actionable data missing from analytics in the near future.
How do I tell if I'm experiencing the AJAX enhanced Google search?
Look at the address bar after you've completed a search query. Normally you'll see the URL for google.com appended at the end with a query parameter that begins something like "search?q=KEYWORD":
i.e. [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=seo&btnG=Search]
If you are seeing a URL that has a hash "#" instead of the "search?", then you are definitely seeing the new AJAX interface:
i.e. [http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=seo&btnG=Search]
Bottom Line:
Google claims that this is strictly experimental and affecting a small number of users, but from the buzz I've heard, there are many people who have experienced the new interface.
As stated by Matt Cutts in the comments of Rebecca Kelley’s SEOmoz article, AJAX: Great for Scrubbing Analytics Clean!, "We’re continually testing new interfaces and features to enhance the user experience. We are currently experimenting with a javascript enhanced result page because we believe that it may ultimately provide a faster experience for our users. At this time only a small percentage of users will see this experiment. It is not our intention to disrupt referrer tracking, and we are continuing to iterate on this project. For more information on the experiments that we run on Google search, please see: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/this-is-test-this-is-only-test.html."
Some are worried that this means that Google is trying to inadvertently force everyone to switch to Google Analytics so that they can still access search query data, but the reality is that Google is not going to handicap their user-base by implementing this across the board without an alternative that will actually pass the vital data required by the numerous analytics vendors out there. The likely solution will be something along the lines of URL rewrites (actually changing or masking the final URL to match the query after AJAX has completed the search), or some sort of redirect URL when a user clicks on a link to visit your site (again changing the URL to pass the appropriate query data) - which is what Yahoo! currently uses with great success.
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About the Author
Jeff Jones is a Web-optimization specialist. He helps companies improve their Web sites, SEO results and PPC-campaign performance. Connect and collaborate with him on Twitter.
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