Online Marketing Resources

What is Google Suggest? You’re certain have seen it, but may not know it by name. Put in simple terms, Google Suggest is the auto-complete functionality you see when you type a query into the Google search box. As you type, Google attempts to suggest possible query phrases to you. As soon as you begin typing, the system displays up to ten suggestions and, as you continue to type, the system refines the suggestions.

The suggestions you see are drawn from Google’s knowledge of the most popular search queries. In the screen capture on the right, you can see the results from typing “ap” into Google.com.

For the purposes of this article, Google Suggest is interesting for two reasons: First, with the arrival of Google Instant, predictive search becomes very important to all. Google Suggest gives us some insight into what we can expect when Google Instant makes its appearance here in Asian markets. Second, as Google Suggest is tuned to reflect local search popularity, it provides us with a way to gain some insight into variations between local search audiences. For those of us working in Asia-Pac, this is particularly valuable as many of our clients’ target markets cross national boundaries.