actually no (not necessarily). i guess i should elaborate on what i meant in the original posting (i don't speak english natively, please apologize for any unclarity).
there are different scenarios how an average user might act and what he does or doesn't recognize (btw i prefer to use recognize instead of read due to [1]):
0) recognizing the top-suggested word (which is also highlighted in the text field).
1) recognizing those entries in the drop-down list that he explicitly deselects (by hitting cursor-up/-down).
2) recognizing another, particular entry at a glance as exactly the entry he likes google to search for.
now let's discuss these scenarios:
0) only very few people might not recognize the highlighted (suggested) word in the text field. so we can safely assume that an average user recognizes it and hence we can at least assume that a user who rejects the suggested word/term (by hitting 'backspace' accordingly) probably wants this word/term be excluded from his search.
1) i think it's safe to assume that explicitly deselecting a selected suggested entry in the drop-down list (by hitting cursor-up/-down) requires recognizing the currently selected suggested entry (exception: situation like in case 2, see later.) - else, deselecting it wouldn't make much sense (requires an "effort" after all;). explicitly deselecting an entry like this can be interpreted as a negative selection (i.e. the user doesn't want to search for this entry/term.
2) in this case, the user selects the exact term/entry he wants google to search for. this implicitly means that he's probably not interested in any of the other suggested search terms (even if he didn't recognize them), as the one selected matches perfectly.
the relation to the already proposed improvements:
0) and 1) are covered by the already proposed solution variant 1 (which i called "excluding all explicitly deselected search terms"):
the elementary algorithm: so, depending on whether the user a) navigates the list using cursor-up/-down or whether he b) directly selects a certain entry, solution variant 1 (-> a) or solution variant 2 (-> b) is more appropriate respectively. solution variant 2 is also applied if a user uses both a and b.
of course we could further refine the search optimizations (i.e. distinctive solutions for cases 0 and 1, addition of intermediary or fallback solutions), ideally based on statistical results from human-computer interaction experiments (remember we're interested in average users' demands).. also note that the aforementioned explanations are only valid if the list contains distinctive/unequal entries (that's the case with "google suggest" and is true for an option list in general).
this was a general elaboration that implicitly answers your first two questions. now to your other questions:
q: what to do with "bottom-up readers"? a: doesn't really matter (in general/average) as the same algorithm can be applied (usually solution variant 2 as "google suggest" selects the first entry by default).
q: what about options 3,4,5 etc.? a: this is covered by solution variant 2 already.
i hope this clarifies most of it:) i still didn't mention all the thoughts behind it, but i think readers can find out the rest by themselves now..
[1] i'm neither a linguist nor a neurologist, but iirc, the
unfortunately, "google suggest" is not as good as it could be.
why? valuable implicit information gained through the human-computer interaction is not fully exploited by "google suggest". for illustration, see the following example:
let's say i'm searching for "southwest". and for the sake of logic, let's assume that i either don't know the correct spelling or that i'm a lazy dog;). so i start by typing "sou". after a short delay, google suggests "southwest airlines". ok, this seems to be what most people are searching for when entering "sou". luckily, "southwest" is the second most common suggestion listed in the drop-down list, so i just hit 'cursor-down' and 'enter' to autocomplete and search for "southwest". everything ok so far.
now comes the problem:
the top result displayed by google is.. southwest airlines! this of course doesn't make sense because if i wanted to search for southwest airlines, i would have happily accepted google's first suggestion already. actually, "google suggest" knows about my preference for "southwest" over "southwest airlines" and yet doesn't use this "extra-"information gained thanks to human-computer interaction! so my brain feels slightly offended;)
to put it simply: if an average user is selecting a search term from a list of suggested search terms, he probably wants to search for that exact search term but not for any of the other also displayed suggested search terms. if not, an average user would have probably selected another search term out of the displayed list of suggestions. so to me, this looks like if the bright google guys forgot about the fact that the act of selection from a list also implicitly includes information about what does not get selected.
suggestion for a better "google suggest":
as a probably not perfect but working solution, "google suggest" could simply exploit this implicit user interaction information by excluding all explicitly deselected (and eventually all not explicitly selected) suggested search terms from the search query. in the example:
excluding all explicitly deselected search terms yields:
that's pretty easy to implement - with an obvious benefit for average users.
disclaimer: i'm talking about expectations of average users here. iow: about users that are probably just interested in the few topmost results, i.e. the intersection and not the set union of results (but that's probably the point of web searching anyway;). sure, there are people who are interested in the set union and not the intersection.. all they need is hitting backspace accordingly.
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actually no (not necessarily). i guess i should elaborate on what i meant in the original posting (i don't speak english natively, please apologize for any unclarity).
;). explicitly deselecting an entry like this can be interpreted as a negative selection (i.e. the user doesn't want to search for this entry/term.
:) i still didn't mention all the thoughts behind it, but i think readers can find out the rest by themselves now..
there are different scenarios how an average user might act and what he does or doesn't recognize (btw i prefer to use recognize instead of read due to [1]):
0) recognizing the top-suggested word (which is also highlighted in the text field).
1) recognizing those entries in the drop-down list that he explicitly deselects (by hitting cursor-up/-down).
2) recognizing another, particular entry at a glance as exactly the entry he likes google to search for.
now let's discuss these scenarios:
0) only very few people might not recognize the highlighted (suggested) word in the text field. so we can safely assume that an average user recognizes it and hence we can at least assume that a user who rejects the suggested word/term (by hitting 'backspace' accordingly) probably wants this word/term be excluded from his search.
1) i think it's safe to assume that explicitly deselecting a selected suggested entry in the drop-down list (by hitting cursor-up/-down) requires recognizing the currently selected suggested entry (exception: situation like in case 2, see later.) - else, deselecting it wouldn't make much sense (requires an "effort" after all
2) in this case, the user selects the exact term/entry he wants google to search for. this implicitly means that he's probably not interested in any of the other suggested search terms (even if he didn't recognize them), as the one selected matches perfectly.
the relation to the already proposed improvements:
0) and 1) are covered by the already proposed solution variant 1 (which i called "excluding all explicitly deselected search terms"):
southwest -"southwest airlines"
2) could be covered by solution variant 2 (which i called "excluding all explicitly deselected and all not explicitly selected search terms"):
southwest -"southwest airlines" -"soulseek" -"south park" (etc.)
the elementary algorithm: so, depending on whether the user a) navigates the list using cursor-up/-down or whether he b) directly selects a certain entry, solution variant 1 (-> a) or solution variant 2 (-> b) is more appropriate respectively. solution variant 2 is also applied if a user uses both a and b.
of course we could further refine the search optimizations (i.e. distinctive solutions for cases 0 and 1, addition of intermediary or fallback solutions), ideally based on statistical results from human-computer interaction experiments (remember we're interested in average users' demands).. also note that the aforementioned explanations are only valid if the list contains distinctive/unequal entries (that's the case with "google suggest" and is true for an option list in general).
this was a general elaboration that implicitly answers your first two questions. now to your other questions:
q: what to do with "bottom-up readers"? a: doesn't really matter (in general/average) as the same algorithm can be applied (usually solution variant 2 as "google suggest" selects the first entry by default).
q: what about options 3,4,5 etc.? a: this is covered by solution variant 2 already.
i hope this clarifies most of it
[1] i'm neither a linguist nor a neurologist, but iirc, the
unfortunately, "google suggest" is not as good as it could be.
;). so i start by typing "sou". after a short delay, google suggests "southwest airlines". ok, this seems to be what most people are searching for when entering "sou". luckily, "southwest" is the second most common suggestion listed in the drop-down list, so i just hit 'cursor-down' and 'enter' to autocomplete and search for "southwest". everything ok so far.
;)
;)
;). sure, there are people who are interested in the set union and not the intersection.. all they need is hitting backspace accordingly.
why? valuable implicit information gained through the human-computer interaction is not fully exploited by "google suggest". for illustration, see the following example:
let's say i'm searching for "southwest". and for the sake of logic, let's assume that i either don't know the correct spelling or that i'm a lazy dog
now comes the problem:
the top result displayed by google is.. southwest airlines! this of course doesn't make sense because if i wanted to search for southwest airlines, i would have happily accepted google's first suggestion already. actually, "google suggest" knows about my preference for "southwest" over "southwest airlines" and yet doesn't use this "extra-"information gained thanks to human-computer interaction! so my brain feels slightly offended
to put it simply: if an average user is selecting a search term from a list of suggested search terms, he probably wants to search for that exact search term but not for any of the other also displayed suggested search terms. if not, an average user would have probably selected another search term out of the displayed list of suggestions. so to me, this looks like if the bright google guys forgot about the fact that the act of selection from a list also implicitly includes information about what does not get selected.
suggestion for a better "google suggest":
as a probably not perfect but working solution, "google suggest" could simply exploit this implicit user interaction information by excluding all explicitly deselected (and eventually all not explicitly selected) suggested search terms from the search query. in the example:
excluding all explicitly deselected search terms yields:
southwest -"southwest airlines" (voilà! southwest airlines is not the top result anymore
excluding all explicitly deselected and all not explicitly selected search terms:
southwest -"southwest airlines" -"soulseek" -"south park" (etc.. you get the point)
that's pretty easy to implement - with an obvious benefit for average users.
disclaimer: i'm talking about expectations of average users here. iow: about users that are probably just interested in the few topmost results, i.e. the intersection and not the set union of results (but that's probably the point of web searching anyway