Google ‘Suggests’ Search Results

Posted by Vaibhav

August 28, 2008

The most popular online search engine Google is all set to introduce its Search ‘Suggest’, the latest attribute that estimates user’s search queries for its homepage at Google.com. The feature would be finally released in the coming week, after being launched on Labs about 4 years back.

As per Google’s official blog, it was announced that the Suggest search feature will go live over the following week. The feature is said to list query suggestions once a user searches for any particular subject.

In its recent post, the blog reported that Google Suggest will be graduating from the Company’s Labs department and would be accessible by default on the main page of the search giant over the succeeding week.

The post said that Google would be able to assist people search more efficiently and conveniently, providing suggestions upfront.

About Google Suggest:

Google Suggest initially started as a 20 per cent project in the year 2004, and since has extended to Google Labs, Firefox Search box, Toolbar, Web Search and Maps for selected nations, Youtube, the Blackberry and iPhone, and now Google.com

The Suggest attribute functions by attempting to guess a word or phrase while it is being typed into the search bar. This is similar to what Google offers with its ‘Did you mean’ feature to help users locate the exact term or phrase in case they misspell it during search. For instance, the blog said that typing in “prog” would provide a drop down box featuring potential queries like “programming”, “programming languages”, “progressive”, or “progesterone”.

User Benefit:

The Suggest feature will allow users put together queries when only a part of a sentence or the stem of a word is known. Moreover, the service can help users view a large amount of commonly searched phrases after entering the initial few letters; thereby assisting them reduce spelling mistakes as well as save their typing time.

The search leader clarified that the suggestions would not be based on a user’s personal search history, but on data regarding the overall popularity of different queries or searches to help rank the refinements it proposes.

The Competitive Scenario:

When Google started Suggest in 2004, a few other search engines had search suggestions, while archrival Yahoo! also released a major upgrade to its search suggestions ‘Search Assist’ around a year before. In fact, Yahoo’s product is perhaps more complete than that of Google.

Moreover, Yahoo’s service performs search in the background relating to the typed term and accordingly pulls out related terms from the initial twenty pages of search results. Besides, it also suggests terms depending on related concepts. This means the suggestions do not essentially include the accurate term that was searched.

Finally, it all boils down to how Google will capitalize on its latest ‘Suggest’ feature. The idea is to provide convenience to the users, which when combined with Google’s brand image might help it attain more popularity in the search engine market.

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