New 'Google Suggest' Tells You Where to Go

Google Suggest is a new feature on the Google.com homepage that may help with your searches. With the new function, when you begin typing into the search bar, Google Suggest automatically parses through the database of other Google searches and displays in real-time the most popular ones based on what you've entered. Google Suggest instantly creates a drop-down menu, and from there, you can use the mouse or arrow keys to select the word or phrase best suited for your search.

The feature works like the "did you mean?" suggestions. Google Suggest also spell checks and specifies. It will be unrolled throughout the week with a wide release slated for Friday.

Google Suggest has a pretty long history, and you've probably seen it before. According to the Official Google Blog it "originally started as a 20% project in 2004, and has since expanded to Google Labs, Toolbar, Firefox search box, Maps and Web Search for select countries, the iPhone and BlackBerry, YouTube, and now Google.com."

If you're like me, nine times out of ten you already know what you're looking for, and the automatic drop-down menu can be distracting and overly simplistic. I also rarely use Google.com for searches, but instead the search bar located on my iGoogle personalized homepage, which, as of now, does not have Google Suggest built-in.

Yahoo's Search Assist does the same thing, but its search suggestions add more clutter to the already manic nature of the Yahoo homepage. Given the relative sparseness of Google's homepage, this drop-down clutter isn't as invasive or annoying.

To gauge suggestion results, I searched for my unique first name using Google Suggest, Yahoo's Search Assist, and Ask.com's Search Suggestions. Google put my full name at No. 5; Yahoo only found my Facebook page; and Ask.com had no idea about any Brennon.

So where does Google get these suggetions? In Google's FAQs, the "do no evil" company assures us that its new feature "does not base its suggestions on your personal searches, although it does use information about the relative popularity of common searches to rank its suggestions." Basically, they're not watching you; they're watching everybody.

For the unimpressed, Google Suggest can be turned off in your account preferences page. Click "Do not provide query suggestions" in the search box.

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