May Google Suggest...

You’d know it if you saw it- picture a search engine field- you want to do a search for Jennifer Lopez (don’t ask why, it’s the first thing that came to my head). You start to type “jenni...” and all of a sudden a drop-down menu appears beneath the field displaying popular keywords that are frequently searched for- they might include Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Love Hewitt, etc. and right there at the top of the list is Jennifer Lopez. How did those algorithms know?! It all has to do with search behavior and query frequency. Anyway, the whole point is, Google is finally diving into this clever technology to, as Musil writes, “help users execute faster and more specific searches.”

Google Product Manager Jennifer Liu posted “At a loss for words?” in the official Google Blog, which discusses the feature. Liu reported that “Google Suggest will be ‘graduating’ from Labs and available by default on the Google.com homepage. Over the next week, we'll be rolling this out so that more and more of you will start seeing a list of query suggestions when you start typing into the search box.”

Many of the benefits Google Suggest carries revolve around overall convenience- and what’s wrong with that? Liu’s post illustrated how the feature will “help formulate queries,” “reduces spelling errors,” and “save keystrokes.” Searching for concert tickets and diet tips online isn’t exactly brain surgery- by that I mean there is nothing wrong with developing ways to stick in as many helpful short cuts as possible. Like so many others out there, I’m inexplicably hooked on Google as a search engine- and I’m glad it’s finally rolling out Google Suggest- a feature I’ve often admired in Yahoo!.