Search Suggestions

Is this a good idea or not?

[graywolf]

I have added a feature to my site that logs the terms people search for. If you get no results it looks thru a suggestion table to see if you have anything that might be a match, for example:

reed widgets suggests red widgets
greenwidgets suggests green widgets
cyan widgets suggests blue widgets

say someone searches for a product carried only by a competitor, or even stranger the competitor itself. Would it be considered bad form to suggest my product, for example:

Joe's red widgets suggest our red widgets
Sue's widgets suggest our widgets
www.notus.com suggest www.ourdomain.com

[JayC]

say someone searches for a product carried only by a competitor, or even stranger the competitor itself. Would it be considered bad form to suggest my product, for example:

I wouldn't think so, especially if it's a "suggestion."

Your search for Joe's red widgets returned no results. See the results for our red widgets.

Something like that? Seems appropriate, and fair, to me.

[Brett_Tabke]

I think that would be a great idea. Search suggestions always help if you can do them.

[TallTroll]

You can do little wrong by implementing a feature that people seem to love on Google...

The only reservation I would have is whether it significantly impacts on the speed of the search results. If not, then great, it's an enhancement to the user experience (a good thing), but if it makes the page take 30 more seconds to load...

typo

[mack]

It's a neat idea and something I have been experimenting with for a while. You may want to have a predetermined list for popular searches and that way comon typos will get something like didnt you mean "term".