J-Walk & Associates, Inc.

Google Suggestions

If you use Google (and who doesn't), you might have noticed that Google gives you some suggestions when you start typing a query. This works only from the Google homepage -- not from the search toolbar in your browser.

This is called 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...

Our algorithms use a wide range of information to predict the queries users are most likely to want to see. For example, Google Suggest uses data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers.

Here are the current suggestions for a query that begins with, why does excel:

Here are suggestions for excel cashes:

It also has suggestions for my name. Notice that it even suggests how to find a pirated copy of one of my books.

Now that I've preserved these suggestions, it might be interesting to see how they change over time.