Google Has A New One for the Labs – Google Suggest
Google’s Labs has popped out a new beta – Google Suggest. Google Suggest looks like the regular Google search, except as you type in keywords Google — surprise! — tries to guess what you could be typing. The really nifty thing is that it includes search counts with these suggestions. It’s at http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en .
Just start typing in your search words. As you type, a drop-down window will show you possible searches for what you’re typing. I started typing in Elvis and got listings for Elvis Presley, Elvis, Elvis Costello, and even misspellings (Elvis Presly). To the right of the suggestions are the result counts for each item. Move your mouse down to the item you want, click, and the search is run.
This is nice, though a little distracting when you first try it. However I’d like to see a little more to it. For example, if you search for George Cloony, Google Suggest doesn’t try to correct your spelling or even give you the option of searching for George Clooney, until after you’ve run the search when it asks, “did you mean George Clooney?” If you type slow, you might catch the proper spelling flashing by on the suggestion list as you’re typing in the improper one, but I would hope that the final list that’s generated, after you stop typing and look at it, could incorporate spelling suggestions.
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Columist Tara Calishain is writer and editor at ResearchBuzz and author of the new book Web Search Garage
