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Google Suggest Dissected

Posted by michael on from the rated-r-for-responsive dept.

sammykrupa writes "Google suggest Javascript code dissected and rewritten for all of you web developers out there. Cool piece of web reverse-engineering!" Joel Spolsky astutely notes that this will raise the bar in terms of how people expect the "internets" to work.

6 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. Google Suggest just isn't very useful by BillsPetMonkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's think if the way people search for stuff.

    1. Try something specific
    2. Try something less specific

    Number 1. brings up no results on Goggle Suggest, number 2. brings up 523,334 results. Impressive, but how has this helped us search for 1. ?

    Let's try an example, lets look for "C# structs"

    1. Enter "C# structs" - no suggestions.
    2. Enter "structs" - 425,000 results.

    Grrreat.

    --
    "It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
    1. Re:Google Suggest just isn't very useful by Phexro · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yup, this is one of the terribly irritating thing about google... there is simply no way to search for an exact string which contains non-alphanumeric characters. It strips out most punctuation.

      e.g. search for 'tmp/foo/bar' or 'tmp/foo/bar#baz'. You'll see results for '/tmp/foo.bar', '/tmp/foo/bar', and so forth. What if I'm looking for that exact string? This can be very frustrating when searching for posts about a specific error message, since a page with 'condition foo: bar' will be just as likely to show up as 'foo: bar condition', but they aren't necessarily the same.

  2. Google suggest isn't useful though by Segosa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unfortunately Google Suggest has really no use. If you know what you want to search for, you search for it. Suggesting search terms isn't really going to do anything apart from distract you. Hopefully this technology will be used for other things where it actually IS useful.

  3. Interesting & nifty, but little else by BristolCream · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While I'm very impressed with the javascipting behind this and indeed the speed of return from Google's network, I really don't see why it is being treated as revolutionary.

    It could potentually save a user some time, but could equally slow down their search by confusing with a multitude of options.

  4. I don't agree by mansoft · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What you say might be true for us geeks, but have you ever seen how standard users do web searches? They begin with one-word searches, and if and only if the results don't satisfy them do they refine their search.

    --

    Engage!

  5. everything you type in is directly send to google by mrmorgana · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That differs from the well known "nothing happens till you hit the send button paradigm". So beware of type in your passwords by accident. They read everything (and turn it to statistics).