Google is gradually rolling out some enhancements to its search auto-suggest features with the hope of giving users faster way of finding information using Google search. While the first three enhancements are pretty useful, some not so good reactions might results from the fourth enhancement.Here are the enhancements to Google Suggest:
Suggestions on the results page – Whereas before search suggestion are derived by a user’s original search, now Google will now suggest search keywords related to the current results page. Hence, giving users additional way to filter their searches.
Personalized suggestions – This feature works only if users are signed in to their Google account and have enabled Web history. Google will suggest search terms based on previously search terms which are relevant to the current search. In addition, there is now a remove facility opposite to the suggested search terms so that users can quickly remove those which they don’t like.
Navigational suggestions – For search terms which pertains to specific site, the Google algorithm will interpret this and provides suggestions that woul direct the users to the specific site if they click the suggestion.
The fourth and seemingly controversial enhancement is Sponsored links in suggestions. A highlighter link to a site’s sponsored links running on Google. It’s not that there is something wrong with Google serving its paid ads to its content network. Of course Google has every right to do so. But then, it’s a little odd to see paid ads running on the Google Suggest box. It’s as if Google can’t wait till the search results is loaded before serving its paid ads. For all we know this paid links might not be even related to the current search term.
