Google Showing Related Searches In Autocomplete

Competitors In Search Suggest?

Ahem *autocomplete* as Google now calls it.

This past weekend I was playing around with some Google searches when I saw this:

I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen. Google is suggesting I search for Zappos competitors?  I of course tweeted about it with an explanation of how it came up:

Woah. Never seen this before. Competitors in search suggest after I hit enter and put cursor back? pic.twitter.com/64pvwoJnRG

— Dan Shure (@dan_shure) March 14, 2015

Apparently it would only do this if you:

1. Type [Zappos]
2. Hit enter
3. Put the cursor back in the search box (after the word Zappos)
4. Boom. It then shows you these alternative suggestions.

I couldn’t figure out what this was at first. Was it info from the knowledge graph? Something else?  Well, unfortunately it’s not quite that fun.

After some playing around, I realized it is the same suggestions you see under “related searches” at the bottom of the search results.

But, despite the data being the same info Google has always displayed down at the bottom of the SERP. The new prominence of it is what I think is important about this – if they continue to do this.

Just think of how many people may type such a high volume search like [plane tickets] (246,000 monthly worldwide):

But then a percentage of people:

• won’t click anything
• will go to perform a second search
• and see … Expedia etc.

If I were Expedia – I’d be pretty damn excited about this new feature.

This behavior doesn’t seem to be happening for all queries, but here are some other examples I found:

Note that because related searches seem to be localized, it makes the autocomplete look localized. (Hannaford and Price Chopper are local grocery stores)

And MANY more.

My Takeaways

• This matters because of the potential high volume and high visibility related brands, competitors and alternative searches may receive.
• I wouldn’t want to be Zappos, and have competitors showing up right after a brand search if the user abandons their first search.
• But then again, I would want to be Zappos if someone search Nordstrom, abandons that and then sees Zappos in search suggest – so the pros / cons can go in both directions.

Again, these are the same search suggestions you would see under “related searches” at the bottom of search results.

These ONLY show if you’ve:

• Performed an initial search
• Hit enter
• And put the cursor back into the search box (all the way to the right).
• (Some people on Twitter claimed to see it right away without searching first, but I did not see it like that).

Abandoned Searches – Occur More Than We Talk About?

This functionality makes me think about how much we don’t talk about abandoned searches. It makes me wonder if Google is seeing a high percentage of abandoned searches, and is trying to step in between by suggestion better second search terms in the user’s session?

If anyone has data on what percentage of searches are abandoned I’d be really curious to know!

Will This Feature Get It’s Own Data?

IF this feature sticks (and to be honest, I kind of like it) – will it evolve? When I first saw this happening – my first reaction was “oh wow, this is the knowledge graph in search suggest! Semantic Search Suggest!” But when I realized it was just “related searches” my excitement died a little.

But perhaps this is the sign of things to come. More “intelligent” search suggestions.

Right now search suggest has been based ONLY on words – kind of like “old” SEO. Boring keywords. You would only get suggestions from left to right ordering – but perhaps this will grow more sophisticated – just like search in general has.