Thinkubator – A Thoughtprocess Interactive Blog

Google Suggest isn’t a new development in the tech giant’s storied timeline. It’s not one of the most discussed features in the Google playbook. I’ll even go so far as to say that most people probably ignore it altogether. But before you dispatch this feature as ‘occasionally useful’ let me offer a new approach to looking at Google Suggest.

When you come to Google wanting to search something (which is 20+ times a day for some of us) think about variations of the words that you’re using. For example, you may want to search for the size of a hay bale. You can arrange the words to search “hay bale size”, “size of a hay bale” or a different combination. In terms of what will give you the best results, usually the less amount of filler words the better.

The way that I propose using Google Suggest is to start a common sentence or phrase and see what suggestions pop-up. Since the suggestions are aggregated from common and popular-queries you are getting an insight into public opinion. So, if ethics are generally based on public opinion, perhaps you are getting a look at what is ethical as well.

Here are some examples that I particularly like:

According to suggest “you should never…”

• you should never ask for help on the internet
• argue with a crazy
• underestimate the predictability of stupidity
• smoke in pajamas….good to know in case I ever pick up smoking and get a late night craving

Also suggest says “my job is…”

• boring
• killing me
• making me sick
• stressful

I disagree, my job is sweet, I get to blog. But you can see what I mean about public opinion coming out in the suggestions. Having this information can be useful for market research, politicians, or tracking societal norms.

Maybe you’ll pause for a brief second, maybe that’s how you found this blog post, or maybe you’ll just continue ignoring it altogether

Note: if you find this page in error and are instead looking for hay bale size, there’s your link