Google ‘suggests’ new web search technology

New web search technology will be seen on the Google homepage which will automatically offer real-time suggestions for search queries.

‘Google Suggest’ will be upgraded onto the main Google.com homepage, having graduated from Google Labs. The feature can already be seen in the Firefox Search Box and Google Maps as well as mobile devices such as the iPhone and BlackBerry.

The application works by guessing what you are typing in a search box and will offer suggestions in real time. Google said that this was like a real-time version of the "Did you mean?" feature, which already offers alternative spellings for a query after a search.

Writing on the official Google blog, Jennifer Liu, Google product manager said: “We find that by providing suggestions upfront, we can help people search more efficiently and conveniently.”

She said that the new feature would help formulate queries, reduce spelling errors and save keystrokes. Once the function is fully implemented, it will be possible to use Google Suggest as the default function on the Google homepage.

Google made it very clear that any information given would be private, saying that Google Suggest did not base information on a user’s personal searches.

However, it did say that it would use information about the relative popularity of common searches to rank suggestions, which was covered by the Google privacy policy.

It follows Microsoft’s efforts to invest in new web search technology and the new search engine Cuil, which was designed by ex-Google engineers and released to a fanfare of publicity.

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