Google Suggestions : Uncovers a Dark Public?

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Mar 08

Google Suggestions : Uncovers a Dark Public?

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).

6 comments

§ Ryan said on : 08/03/07 @ 07:11
School girls, scrubs and screensavers! Those are my all time a favorite "sc" searches.
§ Keith Peters said on : 08/03/07 @ 07:57
It also caches your own past searches in the same list. are you sure you aren't giving something away there? ;)
§ Keith Peters said on : 08/03/07 @ 07:59
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".
§ Richard Leggett® said on : 08/03/07 @ 09:37
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!
§ Anu said on : 08/03/07 @ 10:14
google's hidden private project
see http://devshots.com
§ k2007® said on : 30/04/07 @ 04:40
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.