Guess What!

Google’s auto-suggest offers ‘weird’ suggestions because some people across the web found them useful.

If you go to google.com and type ‘I won’ into the search box and wait for a little under a second, five of the seven ‘auto-suggestions’ on the pop-down menu lead to ‘lyrics’. For instance, ‘I won’t tell jay sean lyrics’, ‘I won’t go home without you lyrics’, ‘I won’t back down lyrics’ and ‘I won’t forgive irfan’. (The cricketer, not the actor, I discovered when I clicked and went with the fourth ‘suggested query’.) Welcome to the world of Google auto-suggest. Then, I had a brainwave. I said to myself, let’s try and see how many Indian things Google is ‘trained’ to ‘auto-suggest’. I typed ‘can gan’, which brought forth ‘can ganache be frozen’, ‘can ganassa barcelona’ and ‘can gangs be good’. Not good, considering I was looking for something Indian. Then, I added an ‘e’ to the ‘can gan’.

Now, most Indians will tell you there is only one thing ‘can gane’ ought to lead to, which didn’t happen to be one of the choices prompted by Google. Is Google so stupid or just all-American? Neither. ‘Can ganesh’ is simply not a popular enough search for it to show up on the ‘auto-suggest’ list. (Maybe I should try again around Ganesh Chaturthi.) ‘Can je’, though, did offer the very useful ‘can jesus microwave a burrito’ first up. And, there’s more where that came from.

Actually, there’s no limit to the number of questions you can test Google’s auto-suggest with and perhaps you should waste some of its processing time doing so. In case you’re interested in a site full of Google ‘auto-suggest weirdness’, you’ll find some great ones at questionsuggestions.com.

Finally, how does Google ‘auto-suggest’ work? In short: based on the most popular searches, Google tries to ‘guess and complete’ an initiated query in order to save ‘Googlers’ time and demonstrate how smart it is. If seven out of 10 people asked ‘Can jesus microwave a burrito’, it’s what Google will assume you’re looking for when you type ‘can je’.

The bottom-line: for the time being, don’t depend on Google auto-suggest. Have fun.

About The Author

Avinash Subramaniam