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July 12, 2007 / 14 Comments

Yahoo adds real-time on-the-fly search term suggestion

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Simply brilliant. Anyone for a betting pool on when this shows up on Google? And pause to think about what this does for very popular search terms…

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14 Comments

  1. Michael Price says:

    I’ve been using the same feature in Google’s search bar in Firefox for some time now.

    July 12, 2007 — 9:17 am

  2. Comment by post author

    Greg Swann says:

    What’s the underlying engine? Firefox, a Google API or a lookup into Yahoo’s vast index of search terms?

    July 12, 2007 — 9:18 am

  3. Michael Wurzer says:

    I haven’t looked at the Yahoo! stuff in detail, but I think this is similar to Google Suggest.
    http://labs.google.com/suggestfaq.html

    July 12, 2007 — 9:45 am

  4. Eric says:

    I know that “Google Suggest” has been something developers have been extending and mimicking for a little over a year and a half now – I think Yahoo may actually have been behind the curve on this one?

    I do love how Firefox uses the suggest feature of the Google search in the toolbar as well – very nice. When it came out last year, I actually copied the logic to several of my sites for “suggest” searches – the users love them 🙂

    July 12, 2007 — 10:03 am

  5. Carl Atkins says:

    Live.com and the Windows Live Toolbar have also had this feature for quite some time.

    It’s good that Yahoo! and Google are finally catching up to Microsoft.

    July 12, 2007 — 10:11 am

  6. Jeff says:

    Google Suggest even gives you an estimate of how many results you’ll get back. Very useful on deciding the search terms that you’ll use.

    July 12, 2007 — 12:04 pm

  7. Todd Carpenter says:

    Next, they can suggest the key words that pay them the best in their contextual ad campaigns.

    July 12, 2007 — 10:21 pm

  8. Mike Elliott says:

    This has been around for some time with other search engines. I’d love to see a depository of benign search terms turn up some racy suggestions.

    http://mikeelliottsblog.wordpress.com

    July 13, 2007 — 8:56 am

  9. Comment by post author

    Greg Swann says:

    Just to clarify, is anyone here saying that Google or other search engines are doing what Yahoo commenced to do yesterday: Without a plug-in or third-party software, suggesting search terms on-the-fly from its main search engine. I first saw auto-complete on the DEC PDP-11, but that isn’t what I’m talking about, either.

    July 13, 2007 — 8:59 am

  10. Eric says:

    Yep, as was mentioned it also gave the amount of results for that term as well.

    Highly useful and completely standard in the google search box on google.com – it was implemented into Firefox a couple months later when the last release came, but it originated there.

    Once devs like me got a hold of it, we hacked the source and created a dozen similar copycats. For example, the one I created also used IE’s capability to track mousewheel movements so you could scroll through results.

    It was at http://www.google.com/suggest for a while before they moved it into the mainstream, but it was advertised and pretty popular from what I remember.

    July 13, 2007 — 9:17 am

  11. Comment by post author

    Greg Swann says:

    Just to be clear, here is a picture of Google not doing what Yahoo is shown to be doing in the above image:

    July 13, 2007 — 9:29 am

  12. Eric says:

    You’re right, it doesn’t seem to be on their main page anymore.

    Here is the URL though:

    http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

    I probably have my home page set there instead.

    So Google definitely beat them on the application by a year or two, but I’d agree that Yahoo beat them on placing it on the front page.

    Curious why Google never did that? It’s been nothing but stable, so I wonder if they feel it ruins their “clean” homepage search design theme? I’ll have to look into that 🙂

    July 13, 2007 — 9:35 am

  13. Louisville real estate says:

    Yeah, I just noticed this for the first time the other day and I LOVE it, personally! And, Eric, you are definitely right. Google only currently has it on their search bar.

    July 13, 2007 — 9:58 am

  14. B.R. says:

    Greg, Google has answered. search city, st. and look down at the bottom of the page and there you should see suggestions…

    Honestly, that placement makes better sense but I think they run the risk of shutting out anyone on the second or third pages, and as we all know, first page doesn’t equal relevance.

    July 13, 2007 — 7:56 pm

July 12, 2007 8:31 am
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