Google’s new search feature

By Yi-Wyn Yen

This week Google began rolling out its latest search feature, Google Suggest on its homepage. The new tool, which offers suggestions when you begin typing into the blank search box, was launched to help people who have difficulty defining their queries or are bad spellers.

Google Suggest is supposed to make searching more convenient. Say you’re looking for videos of Michael Phelps’s 100 meter butterfly race. The more keywords you type in, like “Michel Phelps 100,” the better Google gets at guessing what you’re looking for. Like other search engines, Google uses its own algorithms to anticipate what you’re looking for. Google already offers a similar feature, “Did you mean?” that corrects misspelled keywords after a search is performed on the homepage. The company has also promoted the suggestion function on YouTube, the Firefox browser Google search box and its Google Labs site.

In a blog post, Jennifer Liu, a Google product manager, explained that the latest feature was “like magic.”

Both Yahoo (YHOO) and Ask.com (IACI) have been providing “magic” for some time. But so far that hasn’t helped attract much traffic from Google (GOOG).

Since Yahoo launched the Search Assist feature 13 months ago, its search market share has dropped 3%, according to comScore. Ask.com started the trend three years ago, but its percentage of search share has remained in the single digits. Microsoft’s Live Search, the third-place search engine, does not currently offer the feature.

Enquiro, a search marketing firm that tracks the way your eyes scan search results, is skeptical that such features from really help. What matters most is the relevancy of results, notes Enquiro CEO Gord Hotchkiss.

“Yahoo Search Assist or Google Suggest are quick fixes,” he says. “All the search engines have this dilemma where they need to improve relevancy, but that requires a huge investment on the back end. The alternative is to have users do more work to define queries. But users don’t want to do more work, so the engines are using this stop-gap measure.”

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I am going to stop using google:
Reason: It is not user friendly. It forces suggestions in the search box. It does not permit the user to the on/off option.

Posted By Sam, South Gate, California : November 21, 2008 1:59 pm

People Want to learn I agree, but I doubt people will take a course no matter how convenient it may be to learn more about how to use Google. Instead I think Google should simply make more tools that are automaticly used in the Google search engine.

Posted By Joe orlando FL : September 6, 2008 2:57 pm

I don’t think users don’t want to do more work. I think users are lacking the knowledge of all of the techniques that are built into Google. Or even that these techniques exist. Users are happy to do this work if they knew about it.

To counter this problem, we developed a company called Boost eLearning. We now offer an elearning course, Google Search Training.

This type of training might be the best direction for people to find what they are looking for.

Posted By Jeff Seattle WA. : August 28, 2008 8:20 pm

I’d rather be able to turn it on or off myself. Too many things are already being forced on us.
Without having to login to do so!

Posted By Gene Inverness, FL : August 28, 2008 7:50 pm

The biggest improvement that the article describes is not the ability to suggest popular searches that start with what you are typing (as Yahoo! does), but rather to be able to catch spelling errors as you type. This would be groundbreaking, as I haven’t seen Yahoo! or Ask get this into their system yet.

Posted By JAy., Houston, TX : August 28, 2008 2:30 pm

Unfortunately, neither Google nor any other search engine works when the term you search for has non alpha characters.

It would be nice to have back the old, advanced Alta vista which allowed to search for an exact string, even if not alpha characters.

Also the old Alta Vista regular expressions are gone from all engines, except for simple AND/OR

Posted By Akcje, Cmpbll, CA : August 28, 2008 2:26 pm

Yep, I’ve had thing turned on for the longest time. It was in Google Labs *yeaaaaars* back, and I’ve had it turned on by default with a Firefox add-on for maybe a year. It actually is pretty helpful.

>> “Both Yahoo (YHOO) and Ask.com (IACI) have been providing “magic” for some time. But so far that hasn’t helped attract much traffic from Google (GOOG).

>>”Since Yahoo launched the Search Assist feature 13 months ago, its search market share has dropped 3%, according to comScore.”

Yep, I’ve been using Google Suggest for much longer than 13 months. Much longer.

Posted By Joe, Rochester, NY : August 28, 2008 12:34 pm

Nope, sorry. The author is right. Yahoo and Ask have both had this feature for quite some time now. Whereas, Google just launched it.

Posted By YL, Los Angeles, CA : August 28, 2008 12:18 pm

Google Suggest is not new. It’s been around for about 4 years, I think. Having it on the main search page by default maybe new, but saying Yahoo and Ask.com have had it longer is just plain false.

Google’s had this in beta for four years through Labs. It’s also been available on the iPhone, on IE 7 toolbar and Firefox 2/3, and as well as select countries like Russia, India, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and S. Korea. But this week marks the first time Google’s brought it to its homepage as a default. Thanks for your comment, Brian. – Yi-Wyn Yen

Posted By ucihonors : August 28, 2008 11:58 am

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