Suggesting queries is becoming a pretty standard practice on search engines these days. You know, those drop-down menus that are populated as you type with things you likely mean. They’re useful, but Google just made them more useful.
Previously, when you types a query into Google’s search box, the menu would drop down giving you a range of possible search terms and how many results each would return if you select that one. Clicking on any of those would take you to a results page. Starting today, when you start typing in the search box, the suggest drop down is populated with a number of interesting things including direct links to pages, personalized results and even sponsored ads.
For example, if you start typing “TechCrunch” into Google with this feature enabled, you’ll see the first result in the drop-down menu is an actual link to our site. That cuts out the results page middle-man and saves time. There won’t be hyperlinks populated for all queries, but ones where Google is pretty sure they know what you’re looking for, you should see them on, we’re told.
That’s a great feature — but it also opens the door for Google to do something potentially much more interesting. With hyperlinks now in Suggest results, Google can also start serving ads in the results drop-down. And it’s already experimenting with it for a limited number of sponsored links.
This is Google serving you ads before you’ve even done a full query — just based on what you’re typing. And it’s pretty genius because presumably, companies would bid to get placed in these drop-downs just as they do for search result pages. And the click-through on these things must be massive.
But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Google is very much downplaying that aspect right now, only saying that its experimenting with a limited number of sponsored links and that the feature is not open to new advertisers at this time. But you can bet it will be one day, and it can do nothing but help Google’s ad click-through rates.
[Above: What Suggest previously looked like.]
Another nice feature new to the drop-downs is personalized results. If you use Google’s history feature, you can see sites or results that you’ve used in the past get populated at the top of the drop-down. And if those aren’t actually relevant to what you’re looking for, there’s a “Remove” link to kill them.
Something else useful that Google is doing with Suggest is that even when you’re on a search results page now, you can use Suggest to further tailor a search. What I mean by this is, say your first search was for “roller coaster,” when you get to the results page, if you start typing in the search box again, you’ll get results based around that original query. So if you were to type “biggest,” Suggest would give you a drop down with “biggest roller coasters” suggested. It’s a subtle feature, but nice.
A final small feature is that the “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” buttons have been placed in the drop down as well. Previously, the drop down obscured the view of these. And as you’ll notice in the screenshots, Google removed those silly tallies telling you how many results each query had. Most people were just confused by them, and it’s not like they helped rank the results in the drop down, Google says.
Yesterday, I gave Yahoo some grief over their search product on the consumer end after a lackluster state of search event. This is the type of stuff I like to see — just small, little useful features. They don’t necessarily have to be game-changers — at least not until Google starts selling those sponsored links in the drop-downs.
Wow putting ads there is forcing it a little bit too much
Google is evil.
goog search becoming another gmail. it takes hours to load page, slows down whole comp, hangs browser. does such features add value of at least extra bandwidth it uses???
Gmail does that to you? hahaha
hahaha
Better upgrade that old 486 then!
Are you based out f Afganistan ?
But it is a great concept and I would love to get my ads shown that way.
Putting sponsored links in the drop-downs will hurt their page impressions and the small advertiser.
Straight from the ebay playbook I guess. Screw your users because you have a monopoly and because you can.
bad idea to place ads there. I thought Google had better sense than that
I can understand Google’s point of view. If you can click on those results A LOT of people will never get to the results page – where the ads are who provide bread to the GOOG.
im not seeing the personalization. most of G’s income does not come from their homepage site. its comes from the “adspam”syndicate network aka other peoples sites. this suggestion drop down menu is ridiculous.
Question? is Gaggl “Result Spamming”?
techcrunch.com got 4 million results. only needed one or a master collection on one page. Gaggl appears to have been “Result Spamming” for years. this is something you will never hear that joker Matt Cutts talk about. when wiil they cut the “result spam” and put the real meat and potatoes on one results page that you can scroll? maybe its because they know the more Result Spam the more potential for an ad click. i thought they were into organizing and improving user experience. hogwash.
SuggestLocator.com – good advice
These, indeed, are tough times for Google. No surprise that it resorts to doing the one thing it knows well — serving ads in search work-flow.
Wow, you pundits really know your stuff…
hurt page impressions… bad place for ads…
so, um, why?
I expect the correct ads will get a good click through since they will be the shiniest things on the main site.
just an FYI, they added ads to maps, images, suggestions, reader, larger ads on news, more on youtube in 3 MONTHS.
im going to yahoo, fuck that
And you seriously think Yahoo has less ads ??
no, but yahoo is a non-profit.
haha
yahoo is non profit..that is news
That is one place ads should not ever be If they begin putting ads there that maybe one of the things to get me to actually stop using google.
precisely.
and if they do, get AdBlock Plus. works like a charm with that.
Update: They seem to have taken the ads down.
nevermind, theyre still there. But they’re very sparse. Bad google. Bad.
I wonder when they will update the suggest box on the google toolbar?
MG shut your mouth. I’m sure if Yahoo had released this first you won’t be watering over it as much as you are with Google. Actually you would have bitched about how this is an eyesore and an invasion of ads.
Isn’t the convention to complain about intrusive ads?
You have too much biased reporting. Keep talking down Yahoo idiot. When in reality we need yahoo to be around and competitive.
Your bias is just as bad as Fox News. Keep it up and Murdoch would be calling.
completely agreed, you can tell just by looking at the douches picture that he goes on twitter all day and has a million twitter apps on his trendy iphone (which is almost as trendy as his stupid emo glasses)
How long will it be before the suggestions themselves are ranked?
MG — quick observation: In the end of this post you mention how you just gave Yahoo a roasting and how Google is great because you love those small little improvements they’re adding. Yet when I read that article roasting Yahoo Search, you dismiss Yahoo’s musicians search experience — an experience that provides:
* Full song playback
* Music Videos
* Lyrics
* Artist Photos, etc
It seems like these would also classify as “just small, little useful features” — similar to what you love about Google, yet your reaction was categorically different. Granted this is a blog, so there’s no reason to assume journalistic neutrality, but once you get to the point that you’re breathlessly applauding the addition of ads in a venue that used to be user-benefit focused, you risk sounding like a shill.
For the record, I work for Yahoo and worked on some of the features you aren’t impressed with. We’re always happy to listen to feedback (even harsh feedback) and improve, but I’m occasionally surprised as the press goes ga-ga over something like Google Rich Snippets, when Yahoo SearchMonkey launched a better version of the same program months ago. Search is hard space and it’s exciting whenever anyone comes up with a new idea — whether it be small players like Wolfram, Cuil, Powerset, Searchme, (+lots of startups powered by Y! BOSS [TechCrunch included]), or ideas from big players like: Google, Yahoo, MS, Ask, Baidu, Yandex.
I’m not sure what benefit TechCrunch gets from such uneven recognition of these efforts, and the staff obviously has the right to publish whatever they deem suitable. Still, it strikes me that TechCrunch has always played a significant role in covering and publicizing new ideas (ranging from the wackiest startup to the big guys), so it’s unfortunate when coverage seems more driven by the reporter’s brand biases than the underlying ideas.
see, this is exactly your problem: you have time to write blog comments, instead of getting stuff done. are you slacking off in a “vision meeting”?
i completely agree tom, and that is only the tip of the iceberg. there are other nice yahoo search objects
I can’t believe we still have to type at this point. Doesn’t Google have enough info on us by now to simply know what we need or want 24/7
If we take this feature on face value and presume its for the good of the user…then the links displayed in the search bar is meant to cut out the results page and direct users to the actual page they want.
So people visit Google.com, type in a term, get a results page and finally click a link and get to the wanted page. That’s 2 pages (Google pages) before loading the wanted page.
Clearly, Google has considered browser embedded search (like in Firefox for example which cuts out the Google.com homepage). You type in a term from within your browser and you get a page of results and click a link to get the wanted page. Thats only 1 page before loading the wanted page.
Seems to me that the second scenario is still better for the users, and these features do nothing to enhance usability in terms of cutting out pages and serving links quicker. Therefore these features cannot simply be a small/minor update as the post suggest. They most certainly are a new direction which you can bet will benefit Google more than the users.
Type amaz … it suggests amazon.com as a hyperlink, type eba … it suggests ebay.com as a hyperlink, type microsoft and it still does not suggest microsoft.com
holy crap… adwords on suggest queries… they’re working really hard to try and milk businesses…
because that’s what internet is all about, lots of people don’t buy anything. It’s not like a shop with 100,000 visitors who most of them are interested to buy something. In Google, lots of its users are just people who come, search something, and say good bye. So Google will try as best as they can to milk their search engine.
UPDATE: I don’t think these new features are live in all countries yet. google.co.nz still has the old google suggest.
Maybe next we’ll see Google start their own directory like yahoo and charge for inclusion and offer ‘directory suggestions’ in SERPs and charge massive annual directory listing fees.
yes ,I expect the correct ads will get a good click through since they will be the shiniest things on the main site.
PredictAd has been doing this for a while now for website search, taking this service ine step further.
Visit predictad.com to customize your own search autocomplete and generate your code. After that it’s a simple copy/paste and you’re up and running with a site-specific autocomplete (+optional ads).
Very good feature, Google is making people lazy
, now we don’t have to type much on search boxes 
, and more accurate suggestions
I’m not seeing it. I’m on google.com right now and it’s not appearing. IE7 and Firefox
have they reversed it?
the idea to use sponsored ads in suggest is really cool.nice thinking by google staff.
I don’t know about most of the other commenters here, but I think this is genius. Though I doubt that the suggest tool influences many searches, it is only as valuable as Google can make it. Adding ads there increases exposure, and hyperlinks make it easy for people who know where they are going but are searching nonetheless. It makes it more direct, simpler, and more useful. Well done.
I always found it funny when people knew where they wanted to go but instead of typing directly in the address bar, they typed it in google and then clicked the link. But I guess a lot of people do that.
And MG, I liked seeing the number of hits in suggest – I often search for different variations of phrases just to see which wording is more common (ie more hits)
eh don’t mind the ads much, its easier to get what you want
So Google found out nobody but “Natural Born Clickers” are clicking on the Adsense links as the rest of the population just ignores the adds.
Thus now Google pushes you the adds right where you are looking at: the search box.
Natural Born Clickers:
http://www.smvg...ash.asp?pr=1643
So, if I want to get the same google suggest result that TechCrunch gets, what exactly would I need to do? Just create a google ad for my company’s name?