I had an issue with Google for almost a week. Everytime I went to it, it would tell me that my cookies weren't enabled(Firefox on my Mac)...yet I use Google for everything...constantly searching it, and yes my cookies were enabled. Actually forced me to use Yahoo for searching, and it sucked.
Anyhow, I took drastic measures and looked at my saved cookies and deleted all the ones that were from Google, and that solved the problem. I saw what Nathan saw as well.
Check the Gizmodo link above, even has video!
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goektR-3oB8&feature=player_embedded]YouTube - Google Interactive Colour Balls[/ame]
For the second time in as many days, Google has a new, interactive mystery logo on its home page.
The logo starts out grey; the letters light up as you type text into the search box.
This is widely speculated to be a hint at one thing we should expect from Google's big search event later today: streaming search results.
For the past few weeks, some users have been seeing search results that update as the user types. This isn't simply Google Suggest which suggests search queries as you type; instead, the full results page appears as soon as you start typing, and updates as you add more text.
After seeing the new logo, we'd be surprised if Google didn't talk about this at the event
Streaming Search sure is interesting from a web master point of view. I've been reading articles all evening that say it does nothing to SEO efforts to it will kill all SEO efforts made by those looking to game the system. Most all say it does level the playing field somewhat and it rewards actual content over well placed key phrases only put in place to attract Google Bots.
The end user has a bit more control over what is displayed as well, web history and personalized results will flow into Google Instant making your own searches more relevant to items you tend to search for.
One can also turn off the Instant Search feature for a session or all the time in your account settings. Not Safe For Work content is filtered. Queries that may be considered offensive or lewd don’t work in Google Instant. In these cases, Google stops showing search predictions and search results, and instead displays a “Press Enter to search” message below the search box.
I'll certainly be watching the sites analytics to monitor for changes. Google will be holding an online seminar soon to discuss how Google Instant may impact content publishers. Already registered. However from all that I've been reading this should not impact M/A at all as I've used "White Hat" SEO techniques endorsed by Google when optimizing this sites SEO. I.E. No paid for placements over 1000's of BS sites only created to provide a repository from back links.
The SEO landscape hopefully is changing for the better where smaller publishers that have quality content can go toe to toe with the giants out there.
Biggest issue for me right now; I almost never go to Google.com to do searches. I use the search bar ... also, it doesn't work on the iPad, which is where at home I do 90%+ of my web activity!
I'd gladly welcome anything that successfully did that. It was getting to the point where the first two pages were complete spam and totally unrelated to your actual search simply because they had all the phrases hidden somewhere.
