AFP reports a Japan court has ruled Google to alter the search suggestions and fined Google 300,000 yen ($3,100). The Tokyo District Court ruled that Google has to change the auto-completions for a search on a particular man's name - the name was undisclosed - because Google provided suggestions that the man committed criminal acts. In addition, Google was ordered to pay the man $3,100 for the mental anguish the search suggestion caused him. What is interesting is that since Google does not operate the search results from within Japan, Google technically does not and historically has not [...]

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Google may be in trouble again over the automated suggestions that its Autocomplete feature provides to searchers. According to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (and also reported by TechCrunch), Bettina Wulff -- wife of the country's former president, Christian Wulff -- is suing Google because Autocomplete suggests prostitution-related terms when a searcher types her name into Google's search box. (The couple are shown in the photo above.) Indeed, searches this afternoon on both Google.de and Google.com reference terms like "escort" and "prostitute" in the Autocomplete suggesti [...]

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Have you ever typed a company name into Google and been instantly greeted with words like ‘scam’ or ‘complaints’ by Google Autocomplete? That can’t be good for business, and it is a situation that more and more organizations are finding themselves in. Being part of a firm that is heavily involved in Online Reputation Management (ORM), we take on a wide range of tasks. There is a bit of everything, from helping individuals clean up search results for their names to partnering with corporations to identify and fix reputation problems. One of the most common issues we get now, fro [...]

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Google in deal with French groups over 'Jew' suggestion via the AFP reports Google has made a deal with several French anti-racism groups of Google offering 'Jew' to the search suggestions for several prominent names in that country. Our earlier story named Google Queries Reveal Potential "Underground" Anti-Semitism In France explains that the French people are routinely searching on politicians’ names followed by the world "juif," which means "Jewish" in French. This may imply a strong sense of anti-Semitism, which is known to have been prominent in the history of many European countrie [...]

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The Japan Times reports Google has been ordered to turn off its Autocomplete search suggestion feature in Japan after being sued over some of those suggestions. However, Google says it's only being ordered to remove specific suggestions, not to turn off the entire feature. The man's case was adjudicated on March 19th. He said he found out he lost his job several years ago and was rejected for new jobs due to the suggestions offered by Google. Specifically, when you typed in this man's name, Google Autocomplete apparently suggested the man's name along with criminal acts. The Tokyo Distr [...]

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The Local, a French newspaper, reports Google France was ordered to pay €50,000 ($64,670) to Lyonnaise de Garantie, a French insurance company over a search suggestion that had them labeled as being a "crook." In the case of this French company, when you typed in their company name, Lyonnaise de Garantie it suggested at the end of the name escroc, which means crook or swindler. Google lost the case and was ordered to pay €50,000 ($64,670). As you know, Google's Search Suggestions, part of Google Instant, shows search result completions as you type. The suggestions are based off of [...]

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A new feature of Google+ is Google+ Direct Connect, where typing the name of a company preceded by a + symbol will make that company's Google+ Page appear as a suggestion in the search box, in the right circumstances. Who are the lucky few, so far? Here's an alphabetical rundown, which reveals a number of surprises on how Direct Connect works, along the way: A Amazon, AT&T, Angry Birds and ABC News all make the A list. B & Thoughts About "Regular Suggestion" Opportunities Burberry makes the list here, oddly followed by Angry Birds. Bank of America and Best Buy are regular su [...]

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US presidential candidate Republican Mitt Romney can't seem to catch a break even from Google. Not only does it suggest that he can't win, if you start typing in Romney's name, but if you disagree, Google tries to correct you. Suggestion: Romney Can't Win Start typing in Romney, and Google as its top suggestion "romney can't win," as you can see below: Did You Really Mean He Can Win? Romney believers who ignore the suggestion and go on to search for "romney can win" get this response: "Did you mean: romney can't win" -- that's Google's spell checking system kicking in. Don't Bla [...]

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It appears that Google is testing showing a red squiggly line in the Google search box as you type, if they feel the spelling of your query is wrong. You know, the red line you see when you have a spelling mistake when using Microsoft Word or other word processors. At first, I thought it was a built-in spell checking feature of the browser, but after seeing additional reports and then seeing it myself last night, it seems to me to be a new feature Google is testing. Here is a screen shot of it in action: I've had several other people confirm Google was showing them this red squigg [...]

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Wondering if some celebrity is Gay, Lesbian, Straight or Bisexual? Plenty of people do and turn to Google to find out. But the search engine just stopped offering direct answers about these questions, after they became more noticeable. Google's "Best Guess" About Sexual Orientations Here's an example of one of the answers that were being shown, in response to a search for is anna paquin gay: You can see that Google provided a direct answer: "Best guess for Anna Paquin Sexual orientation is Bisexual." This worked for Paquin and other some other celebrities up until a few hours ago, when [...]

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A popular Irish hotel has sued Google for defamation because Google's autocomplete feature suggests to searchers that the hotel is in receivership. Searchers looking for the Ballymascanlon Hotel -- a four-star property that's reportedly one of the most popular wedding venues in northeast Ireland and is not in financial trouble -- see "ballymascanlon hotel receivership" as an autocomplete suggestion as soon as they've typed only eight letters of the hotel name. According to a recent Sunday Times article (quoted here by TJ McIntyre), some brides have contacted the hotel "in tears" after [...]

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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 mor [...]

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It's a well known feature of Google. Start typing in a search, and Google offers suggestions before you've even finished typing. But how does Google come up with those suggestions? When does Google remove some suggestions? When does Google decide not to interfere? Come along for some answers. Google & Search Suggestions Google was not the first search engine to offer search suggestions, nor it is the only one. But being the most popular search engine has caused many to look at Google's suggestions more closely. Google has been offering "Google Suggest" or "Autocomplete" on the Google [...]

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ZDNet UK reports the Court of Milan has ruled that Google has to filter the auto-completions that Google Instant provides in Italy. The issue is that someone was searching for a particular name and Google offered search completions for the name with con man or fraud. The individual sued forcing Google to filter out those suggestions and won, requiring Google remove any libellous search suggestions for his name. The Court of Milan upheld that ruling on March 31st. The court felt the auto-completions were something being produced by Google and thus did not fall under the protection of th [...]

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Via Google Operating System comes the screenshot above, which shows a new test Google is running that involves auto-completing search queries. It's similar to Google Suggest but, as Google Operating System notes, this auto-completion is happening on long-tail terms where Google Suggest has stopped giving suggestions. I was unable to replicate the test using the same search term shown above. A Google spokesperson gave us this statement about the test: At any given time we are running 50-200 search experiments. We run more than 6,000 search experiments in a given year. [...]

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French newspaper Le Monde issued a report using search query data to argue that the French are pre-occupied with whether their leaders (and would-be leaders) are Jewish. According to AFP, data from Google's search suggest/auto-complete function indicates that French people are routinely searching on politicians' names followed by the world "juif," which means "Jewish" in French. The article says: Along with terms such as "IMF" and "2012" -- for those interested in [Dominique Strauss-Kahn's] global finance work or prospects in next year's French presidential election -- the fourth comm [...]

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As it promised in early December, Google has begun to remove terms associated with piracy from producing search results in Google Instant Search, and from appearing in Google Suggest. That includes searches involving the word "torrent" as well as "BitTorrent," which is both the name of a company in San Francisco that produces torrent software, as well as the peer-to-peer sharing protocol itself. Google promised this was coming in a December 2, 2010 blog post that addressed several issues related to copyright protection. The company said it would remove terms like this from autocomplete: [...]

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The Google Blog announced a few new features for Google search this week. First, they confirmed the realtime counter we reported earlier last week. Second, local search suggestions are now for cities around the world, not just in the US. Finally, Google Alerts for news based alerts is now improved. In April 2010, Google made Google Suggest -- which is now is calling "Autocomplete" -- locally relevant, so that if you are in a specific city or metropolitan area, Google will tailor the autocompletions based on that area. Google said they have extended the "hyper-local predictions" around [...]

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The launch of Google Instant last month drew new attention to what Google suggests that people search for -- and what it purposely omits to keep things family friendly. But over on Google Images, some of the suggestions that appear as you type are more of the soft-porn variety. Girls Gone Wild On Google Here's what I currently see when I enter the letter G at Google Images: Fair to say, autocomplete suggestions like: girls without dress girls breast feeding each other girls in bathrooms aren't exactly the type of things that Google generally wants to suggest to most people. [...]

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Pamela Anderson is a well-known actress. The New Pornographers are an indie rock band. Women rapping are ... well, presumably just females making music. All three are also part of a growing list of known "naughty" phrases that trip up Google Instant. Danny Sullivan has already written about this topic here on Search Engine Land (see The Five Words You Can Never Suggest On Google Instant), but the folks at 2600 -- a hacker community magazine -- are compiling a Google Blacklist of words that Google Instant filters. The list, which is not safe for work and perhaps not safe for other rea [...]

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