Google Knows Best: Improved Suggestions and Spelling Corrections

Localization and personalization of search results has been a major focus at Google. There isn’t one universal set of relevant results for everyone so it makes sense to customize them based on various factors. Now Google is taking things one step further with a few features which should get you to the results you need no matter where you live or what language you speak.

“We spend a lot of time thinking about search results, but we also spend a lot of time thinking about search queries. Today we’re announcing three enhancements to help you input your searches more quickly and easily: more localized Google Suggest, improved spell correction for names and auto-correction for 31 languages,” Pandu Nayak, member of Technical Staff at Google, wrote.

Google Suggest can be a wonderful tool and a real time-saver. Rather than doing multiple searches to narrow down your focus, Suggest points you to the things others have searched for where you’ll likely find the thing you’re looking for as well. The tool was already customized for different regions, people in Australia would get different suggestions than a guy from UK for the same search. Now Google is further tweaking the suggestions for smaller regions, starting with major metropolitan areas in the US.

Another very useful tool in Google search is spelling corrections. The “Did you mean” link has been around for years. Google has now added name correction to help you find the person you are looking for even if you’re not sure how to spell his or her name. Names can be tricky to get right, often there are several alternative spellings for the same name. In order to pick the one you are most likely interested in, Google looks at the context around the name, from the other query terms you may have entered.

Finally, auto-corrections are based on the same spelling correction technology Google employs, but when the search engine is very sure that the query is misspelled, it skips one step and directly displays the results for the search it thinks is the right one. This feature is now available for 31 languages and on 180 domains, Google says, and even more are planned.