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Google is Skynet. Search Suggest Opinions

To know what the world is searching for must be amazing. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing are in that position but they’re not exactly sharing those insights. Well, except if you do a little guess work and leverage their keyword research or keyword suggest tools. For example, the suggest-as-you-type features that all the major search engines now offer can provide some interesting insight “on the fly” into what people are searching for.

For quick keyword research, Aaron Wall has a Google Suggest tool for keyword suggestions that adds more options and insight.

There’s some entertainment value to this as well. Start typing in “my girlfriend” or “my boyfriend” and you’ll see what I mean. Along those lines, let’s see some examples for each major search engine using the syntax, “Google is “:

Google is ...

And what about Yahoo?

Yahoo is ...

Or Bing?

Bing is ...

So, we have “Google is Skynet”, “Yahoo is better than Google” and “Bing is not Google”.   It’s amusing and insightful at the same time. As the clear market dominator, Google queries offer a peek into searchers’ perception of Google as a powerful force that can incite polarizing opinions.  Yahoo as a long standing second in the market brings about more functional phrases and just one indication of passion for the brand. While Bing shows some negativity, the good news is that they are inciting reactions from people. Better to make friends and enemies than for no one to notice you at all.

By the way, Google recently announced the addition of localized search suggest and spelling correction to the suggest features that searchers might find handy.

About Lee Odden

@LeeOdden is the CEO of TopRank Marketing and editor of TopRank's B2B Marketing Blog. Cited for his expertise by The Economist, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, he's the author of the book Optimize and presents internationally on B2B marketing topics including content, search, social media and influencer marketing. When not at conferences, consulting, or working with his talented team, he's likely running, traveling or cooking up something new.

Comments

  3. Akash Sharma says

    Hi Lee,I have also seen a lot of peculiar search results while searching especially when you type “how to” and similar searches as above,This seems like Google is too good at getting organic results as far as the searcher's perspective is concerned.

    • leeodden says

      The Search Suggest options presented should be a reflection of what people are searching on. Just looking at numerous web site analytics can show how many peculiar things people search for.

  5. michaeldmanning says

    Hey Lee… have you checked out the new Google Suggest super-scraper from Promediacorp? It can actually give you a lot more of the funny Google Suggest terms for any search query.

    How about… “Google is a pervert”?

    For instance, check out the “deep” Google Suggest list for “google is”:
    http://www.promediacorp.com/suggester/index.php…

    Please let me know if you like the Suggester tool. You can comment on our blog post introducing Suggester at:
    http://www.promediacorp.com/2010/04/suggester-g…

  6. Ashley F. says

    I think this is a great way to get some quick and general information on which long tail phrases to go after. Starting with just a couple of general keywords you are able to see the types of long tail phrases that people are searching for and you can also then search those phrases to check out the competition for them.

  7. seoruchiweb says

    the suggestion from search engines will always help the searcher and thats makes it an important tools for business to great idea on what searchers are looking for.