Google has helped me on many occassions. I admit it, I’m not the perfect speller. And sometimes, my keystrokes may be a little bit to the right or left, especially when doing Google searches. Google however, has been able to help with their spellchecker – an excellent tool. A recent change at Google seems to be an extension of the spell checker which suggests a few more specific search keyword phrases if a user gives a ‘general’ search keyword.
How does this effect searches? Well if someone is searching for a specific item, say “personal checks” and does a search on Google for simply “checks;” they’re going to run into some results that they’re not looking for, like background checks. Same thing with shoes… did you want running shoes or dress shoes? Nike shoes or boating shoes?
This may be a Google tool to further exploit Google AdWords search keyword advertising. For instance, a text keyword advertisement for “nike shoes” or “running shoes” is more targeted and probably costs more for top bidding that shoes, since a targeted search should bring in more conversions.
Hats off to Google for this experiment as it is both helpful and may pay off. A recent OneStat study showed that of all the search phrases world wide, 32.58 percent of the people use 2 word phrases, 25.61 percent use 3 word phrases and 19.02 percent use 1 word phrase. If Google can both help and financially capitalize on suggesting more trageted phrases to those 19% of searchers who just search for one word phases – they’re filling a void while turning a buck.
Keyword search phrase suggestions are being tested and at time of publication my Google was not showing these new additions. However, the Rugles Search blog, which broke this story, offers two screenshots of the Google Keyword Phrase Suggestions.
