In the spirit of the one-touch automatic car window, Google software engineer Jon McAlister has brought the Google Suggest function to Google News so news seekers can save the carpel tunnel and put their impatience to better practice.
Google Suggest is a feature that provides automatic suggestions based on the first few letters or first word of a search query. Suggestions are populated by recent popular news searches. For example, type in “net” and suggestions like “Netherlands” and “net neutrality appear beneath the search box. The original Google Suggest feature is plagued by inappropriate suggestions because of the surprising number of searches for certain word groups that reinforce preconceived prejudices. Hopefully news seekers will be a little more culturally knowledgeable so a search that begins with “American” doesn’t end with “fat,” “ignorant,” or “terrorist.” McAlister writes on the Google Blog: I’ve always been a big fan of both Google News and Google Suggest. So in my 20% time, I’ve worked on a way to bring them together, and I’m now happy to report the launch of Google Suggest on Google News, which provides you with search suggestions specific to news in your country, in real time, while you type. If you’re already a Suggest user, you’ll see this right away, but it’s not on by default. Although Suggest + News is currently English-only, the suggestions will reflect the English-language regional edition you’re viewing. I find that this helps me save time while doing frequent searches (e.g. [google]. And seeing the Suggest list gives me a sense of the most common news queries. I wonder when the “English-language regional edition” will include Kentucky, completing “pert-” with “pert near,” “burg-” with “burgoo,” and “mint-” with “mint julep.” Tag: |
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