Google's Strange Suggestions Are Based on Web Pages, Not on What People Type

Google's suggestions are getting smarter, Google is not only looking at what people type to provide suggestions, it looks at common phrases on websites as well.

That is, if a certain phrase or word sequence is found across several websites, it may be picked up and suggested when users start typing the beginning of that phrase.

The Google Operating System blog noticed several strange suggestions that would have never been typed by people, certainly not to the extent needed to generate suggestions.

In fact, Google explains that, along with what people type, it also scours its index for suggestions. "As you type, Google's algorithm predicts and displays search queries based on other users' search activities and the contents of web pages indexed by Google," it writes.

Queries like "web images videos news more ▼" or "intel® solid-state drive toolbox download" can be suggested. While it is useful to expand the suggestions, it can lead to strange queries such as this.

It could also be abused, to a degree, though that requires a large number of pages to use the exact same phrase, defeating the purpose of trying to game Google into getting a better placement.