08 March 2007

Google Suggestions : Uncovers a Dark Public?

Written by Richard Leggett ( )
Published on March 8th, 2007 @ 06:47:12 am, using 215 words, 743 views

Categories: Serverside

If you use Firefox, you get a nice little Google search box top right of the browser. Now if you type in the beginning of the word, it populates a drop down with a list of suggestions, based on Google's vast database of what people search for. (You will also see your own previous search terms above the "suggest" list).

So you type in "b", you see Britney Spears topping the list, I can accept that I guess. Then "m", you see "MySpace"... so far so good. But I'm trying to find a widget called Scenario Poker, and I type "sc", first thing that comes up is "School Girls". What exactly does this mean? Surely it cannot mean that most people searching Google with words beginning in "sc" are clicking through to pages on school girls? Or is it far less sinister?

What exactly does Google make these suggestions based on? It isn't the search results for the solitary term "sc" so we can discount that. Nevertheless it is intriguing to peek into the terms people are apparently searching for on a regular basis.

You can read more on how it works on the FAQ. It states that although it doesn't use your own personal search history, it does use the collective (the Zeitgeist results).

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Comments, Pingbacks:

Comment from: Ryan

School girls, scrubs and screensavers! Those are my all time a favorite "sc" searches.

Permalink 08/03/07 @ 07:11

Comment from: Keith Peters

It also caches your own past searches in the same list. are you sure you aren't giving something away there? ;)

Permalink 08/03/07 @ 07:57

Comment from: Keith Peters

oh just saw your last paragraph. but it definitely caches your own search history. i was looking for a tool called scrivener a while back, that came up first on the list, along with my initial misspelling, "scribener".

Permalink 08/03/07 @ 07:59

Comment from: Richard Leggett [Member]

Haha Keith, I knew someone would say that... ;)

That's why I had to put the last sentence in there. I also asked 3 guys at work to double check just in case somehow someone had used my computer and searched for that term or similar!

Permalink 08/03/07 @ 09:37

Comment from: Anu

google's hidden private project
see http://devshots.com

Permalink 08/03/07 @ 10:14

Comment from:

If you use any other browser you can find this info here: http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
+
you can also see the quantity of sites in Google search results on this query.

Permalink 30/04/07 @ 04:40

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