Google Instant’s Autocomplete Now Also Works On Word-By-Word Basis

Google announced they have improved the Google Instant autocomple suggestions feature to work better at suggesting particular words, in addition to full search phrases.

Google explained that many searches done at Google were never done before, so offering up predictions on a long tail query can be complex. But if you look at only part of the query, the chances of that query being done before at Google increases tremendously.

The example given by Google was [florida state senate building], where the four word query is not all that common, but the query [state senate building] is much more common. So Google will now look at part of the query to come up with an auto-completion. In this case, [state senate building].

Google explained:

By looking at just the last part of what you’ve typed into the box, in this case “state senate bui,” we can generate a prediction for “building.” You’ll see a dropdown box below the end of your search with predictions for just that word.

As before, to search for the predicted query you simply click the prediction or arrow down and hit enter. The feature can be particularly helpful for long queries, since the query is likely to be more unusual. For example, if you’re trying to figure out [how many stairs to climb the arc de tri]… now you’ll actually get the prediction for “triomphe” (a good thing, too, because there’s no way I’d spell that right). Or, if you’re looking for an [online store with underwater gad], you can save that extra second while you’re shopping for “gadgets.”

This is now being rolled out to English based Google users.

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