Google Suggest

Search sugesstions, in real time as you type.

[xcandyman]

[google.com...]

AWESOME!

[labs.google.com...]

What is Google Suggest?
As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time. This is similar to Google's "Did you mean?" feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, except that it works in real time. For example, if you type "bass," Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include "bass fishing" or "bass guitar." Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like "progr," Google Suggest might offer you refinements like "programming," "programming languages," "progesterone," or "progressive." You can choose one by scrolling up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse.

[internetheaven]

Searches certainly aren't country specific:

[google.co.uk...]

shows exactly the same suggestions as:

[google.com...]

This autosuggestion thingy though is for English only, at least for the few German words I typed in, I only got English results.

The FAQ's say that it is only supposed to be for English searches at the moment. I suppose they count the few German words that are typed into Google.com, .co.uk, .ca etc. as English. Is that how they work?

Sorry I'm posting so much but I've been on this for nearly 12 hours, I'm worried Google are going to take it away or all the webmaster's searches that are happening right now will affect the results in a couple of days making it less "pure" for research.

[mifi601]

actually some german terms do show up, once you start typing the second german KW ..

will try spanish now!

[dauction]

GoogleGuy...

So the next step is pretty clear... of those 10 results how long before I get to BUY one of those positions! (or at least Sponsor a search )

G's revenues sky rocket and I dont do to bad either ;)

Every single search G then makes money

[GoogleGuy]

Sorry dauction, no can do. :)

BTW, I'm really glad to see this:
[google.com...] blog/2004/12/ive-got-suggestion.html
(You'll have to remove the space to make it a valid link.) This was basically one engineer's project in their 20% free time. Go Kevin.. :)

[edited by: Woz at 2:52 am (utc) on Dec. 19, 2004]
[edit reason] Tidying Up. [/edit]

[Powdork]

Does anyone else notice they seem to be guiding us towards searches which would produce high adwords revenue?
Google wouldn't do that, would they?;)

Hey Google, I've got a suggestion for your engineers. FIX YOUR BROKEN SEARCH ENGINE!
Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

[irishaff]

Internet heaven wrote :

Has google cached my searches and is it now presenting itself as some sort of AI engine having mined my data?

FAQ on Google Suggestion Tool:

"Google Suggest does not base its suggestions on your personal searches, although it does use information about the relative popularity of common searches to rank its suggestions."

Wow , so in checking my own results i have single handedly moved a search engine into thinking my words are important. I dont search for all my terms that often do i :( Could one deploy bots to steer the engine..

[thewebboy]

Great Hanukkah/Christmas present Google!

[steveb]

mi
miserable failure rates fourth.
mis
rates first.

Makes me woinder about how these choices are ranked; and also about how curious people are about things they hear.

[volatilegx]

This is the coolest thing I have ever seen for a search engine!

[sandalwood]

Google has just made us pay some attention again and leave MSNbeta 'under the table'...
Interesting by the way...

[Rogi]

I like it. I just wonder how the search query suggestions get there... are they queries that pass a certain 'limit' of searches per month and are therefore in the suggestion box, etc.

Also, will this now open up new google scams such as
people typing the same query thousands of times per day (using a bot perhaps) just to rank their terms higher

or even people now starting to rank for things like
aaa Query here
bbb query here

etc, so as soon as the first letter is typed, that suggestion will show up, etc etc.

It's a handy tool. It should have a 'turn suggestions off' somewhere. But most importantly, has it been really thought out in terms of google spam and scam.

[davelms]

Interesting. Well, for stuff that I look at there are some spelling mistakes in the list shown (and not US vs UK English either). Which caught me out at first because I thought 24 results!?! until I saw the spelling - two examples in my 'field'. So I can't think the volume of queries to trigger inclusion can be that high. Interesting also to find my name in there, smiling back as I typed one letter at a time ... I can't think *that* many people are interested in me :-)

[Hester]

Works fine for me in Opera 7.54.

I'm curious as to why typing "a" brings up "amazon.com" and "aol.com" as having only ONE result. Ok, so the main results are under "amazon" and "aol", but surely many people will have added the ".com" as well? (How can ANYTHING in Google get only 1 result? (And isn't that a Googlewhack?))

This is slower than normal searching. Each key causes new data to be loaded. Plus you're curious at the results. :) But definitely an interesting development!

I'm concerned that adult phrases are coming up though. They need to filter those out somehow.

People will be using it to compare results - almost like a game - for example, who gets more results, Britney or Christina? Bush or Bin Laden? (Except we've seen that one before in the form of Googlefight (I think).)

I typed in the name of my site - but got nothing! :(

Hey, try the following!

zz - reveals "zzzz" is popular!
Numbers
I can get results from the pound sign! But dollar does nothing. (I'm in the UK.)
Other characters across the top of the keyboard don't do anything.
Full stop works!
The broken pipe symbol works! (AltGr + key below ESC.)
The solid pipe symbol doesn't.
The '¬' symbol works! (SHIFT + key below ESC.) '¬_¬' gets 125,000,000 results! :o

[bloke in a box]

Wow, that could be very interesting / useful.

Do I need a specific browser to use Google Suggest?
Your browser must be Internet Explorer 6.0 (or newer), Netscape 7.1 (or newer), Mozilla 1.4 (or newer), Firefox 0.8 (or newer), Opera 7.54 (or newer), or Safari 1.2.2 (or newer). You'll also need to have both JavaScript and cookies enabled.

Interesting as well though why do you need to have cookies enabled?

[steveb]

"How can ANYTHING in Google get only 1 result"

As explained above, Google only returns domain.com for a domain.com search. One result.

[claus]

The register ran some queries with the suggest tool to produce "The new world's A to Z, courtesy of Google" - funny stuff.

[theregister.co.uk...]

Of course, A brought them Amazon, and E brought them Ebay, but there was a few surprises.

[internetheaven]

Anyone able to hazard a guess as to how many searches a phrase needs to have before it gets included? I'd love to know both "Suggested Search" and "Keyword Suggestion Tool" inclusion requirements - does anyone know where a Google staff member has stated these?

[Rogi]

Hmm..

I've found one query in there which I am sure nobody else would have used.

And assuming I am the only one to have ever searched this query (it is the name of one of my sites, which is relatively new and i doubt anyone would search for it by name) ... anyhow, this query is in there and if I am the only one to have ever searched for it, averaging say 30 times per month for that query over a period of 6 months... Doesn't seem too difficult to get a query in there.

[Vlad]

I'm not sure what I think of this new tool yet. For instance it appears that three, four or five keyword search phrases are being phased out. Even in some instances two keyword phrases such as, "city, state"

I have pages that get pulled up because they type in the city and state, not just the city. When they start typing the "city" and the "city" appears in the list, they will scroll down and click on it, not even bothering to type in the state. There is no way I would ever get pulled up just for the city.

Some pages get pulled up on obscure phrases and keyword combinations sometimes 5 or 6 keywords long. I guess I'll have to say - bye bye - to this traffic too.

[Geetu]

Amazing absolutely awesome.

I think its great for both searchers and website owners.

[uioreanu]

just a humble suggestion: maybe while the user scrolls the possible searches, in the background, the google cache can preload the result set, so that when the user finally presses search/enter, the results appear instantly.

a great tool otherwise!

[yogis]

That means more work for the SE optimizers. Well I guess it would help Website promoters to mark out the desired KW's as suggested by Google. That means their work is cut short.

[raptorix]

The technique used is very cool but not new, i did build a similair thing back in 1999, but the coolest about this thing is that it does make use of live queries.

I think lot of others will copy this technique and implement it on their sites.

[rytis]

Thanks Goggle this is both fun and useful. Now if there was also "backwards" suggestion: i.e. you type widgets and get:
blue widgets 1,034,876 results
red widgets 2,982,887 results
....

Google? ;)

[annej]

I don't care for the autocomplete. It suggests things completly different from what I plan to type and are just a distraction. Most annoying is the fact that it automatically puts an s on many words so you have to delete the s if you want to search the singular.

The suggestion aspect is interesting. It might actually help people refine their search.

[zardoz]

thank i will use it a lot

[doortodoororganics]

it doesn't work well for the porn industry. all of displayed results have been filtered to exclude this industry's terms