Today Techcrunch broke this piece of news, 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. Google suggest was a feature added to Google search last year to improve the search experience and with this new addition, it has become more intutive and useful.
The suggest feature 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. It also gives an idea about popular search terms are thus giving enough hints to new users on how to find answers to their queires, better still helping them with querying the right thing.
In turn, the feature also found favour with a lot of users who use it for research and who aren’t quite bad with spellings. People interested in music for instance could just type out a band name and their list of songs would appear in the suggest list thus saving time and helping find information they didn’t even know existed (a new song for instance). This was true especially for brands that have recall value but also have aspect beyond their brand to find traffic (like musicians, mobiles, cars).
The interesting question would be how this news would be helpful for search marketers. On one hand their copies can come right below suggestions thereby opening a new avenue of users to target. On top of it the above observation on how suggest might be used also gives food for thought on how they might have to incorporate it in their ad copies. This however might not affect SEO guys as much as it might have had when the suggest feature was launched, because at the core the feature remains the same.
One might also consider this a desperate move on part of Google, given the economic circumstances and need to increase its revenue. Earlier today we also saw how Youtube is moving away from its stand on advertising within videos. In all these days we are seeing a lot of shift in how online advertising is being served and consumed. After being dormant for some while, steps are being taken to push things up again.
