Comments on: Why Google Just Can’t Suggest

By: Anonymous Gamer

Anonymous Gamer — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:42:56 +0000

A bigger problem, IMHO, is when Google Suggest throws up ungrammatical suggestions. “Did you mean ‘Why is Google so ingrammatical?’” Believe!

By: Why you shouldn't use Google's keyword tool for SEO » malcolm coles

Why you shouldn't use Google's keyword tool for SEO » malcolm coles — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:16:10 +0000

[...] Google Autocomplete for web searches and Google Autocomplete for News. The latter have their issues (such as [...]

By: Jon

Jon — Wed, 05 May 2010 18:23:03 +0000

Thanks for your comments Nichola and the insights from your own research. It's a very fair point that internationalisation might not be such a bad thing; it would certainly make life easier if all English words were spelt the same wherever you were in the world!

Having said that, I still don't feel Google should be deciding our fate for us. Perhaps they are just accelerating the inevitable, or perhaps they're creating a problem that might never have existed, I don't know.

I guess the other thing to consider is at what point would the internationalisation of English "stop"? Do I want to be walking down the sidewalk to buy a pink colored donut at my local grocery store next fall? No ta!

By: Nichola Stott

Nichola Stott — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:56:04 +0000

Excellent post Jon, and thank you for the reference to my earlier piece.

I have a client within the personalised gifts sector, which was one of the main catalysts to my interest. I can completely support your case 4. research as we have seen a similar rise on volume for personalized [keyword] in their sector; thus the suggestion becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Luckily we saw this coming and opimised accordingly, so I don’t feel too bad about it from a business perspective; however as a Mum part of me is pissed that this half-assed approach to suggestive assistance, clearly leads to homogeneity in language and culture.

I don’t know… maybe this increased internationalisation of culture isn’t such a bad thing, and we’re just naturally resistant to change?

By: malcolm coles

malcolm coles — Tue, 04 May 2010 13:28:33 +0000

Did you see the xkcd colour survey? They’d used google to check the spelling of fuchsia … and hence got it wrong. It corrects to fuschia (and if you start typing that, it shows fuschia as a suggestion so you’ll think it’s right). And as you start typing fuscia (if you’re really unsure), it suggests fuschia. Hmm. I feel sorry for the owner of fuschiadesigns.co.uk …

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 04 May 2010 11:14:30 +0000

Thanks for your thoughts Malcolm (and the retweet). It’s a very good point that personalisation plays a key factor in suggested searches (as listed on this Google help page) so I was careful to make sure I was signed out, history cleared and so on when testing.
For terms like doughnut and yoghurt which haven’t suffered “suggestion merging” with their US counterparts, Google Suggest should weight the English spelling more highly on Google UK and in theory avoid any issues. Although it’s also true that it won’t attempt to correct US spellings of these terms, so people searching for yogurt on Google UK will be non-the-wiser that maybe they ought to be searching for yoghurt.

By: malcolm coles

malcolm coles — Mon, 03 May 2010 21:58:07 +0000

Doh. With the yoghurt thing, that was because I had already searched for it once and so it had personalised Google Suggest when I searched again. In fact, when you start typing yoghurt, you get a bunch of yoga suggestions. So it’s difficult to see how Google could be influencing the spelling (you get to yog and then you have to choose h or u as the next letter – but there’s no obvious leaning on one direction in what Google suggests at that point, due to the yoga stuff). Still, the timing looks suspicious – the acceleration of the trend is shortly after Suggest launched in the UK.

By: malcolm coles

malcolm coles — Mon, 03 May 2010 21:41:16 +0000

Very interesting. On to of my post you mentioned earlier, I did one pointing to the creeping Americanisation of spellings in UK searches.
Looking at the graphs again (for as long as WordPress deigns not to strip the javascript …), you can see a definite acceleration of the trend in May 2009 (for donut / doughnut) and June 2009 for yogurt / yoghurt – which would suggest that Google suggest might be having an effect. I’m not sure what’s happening with the doughnuts, but as I start typing yoghurt, all Google’s suggestions are for yogurt.

By: Andy Nattan - Unmemorable Title Copywriting Blog

Andy Nattan - Unmemorable Title Copywriting Blog — Mon, 03 May 2010 12:19:45 +0000

I absolutely love the fact you’ve pointed out how AdWords’ keyword tool has no basis in reality! And thanks very much for the backink – glad you liked the post!

By: Tweets that mention Why Google Just Can’t Suggest -- Topsy.com

Tweets that mention Why Google Just Can’t Suggest -- Topsy.com — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:29:41 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ruzena Krumpholcova, Jon Hudghton. Jon Hudghton said: New Post: Why Google Just Can’t Suggest http://bit.ly/aQBmOz [...]