Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton

Google has a new service in Beta: Google Suggest. From their description of the new service:

This new web search service suggests queries as a user types what he or she is looking for into the search box. By offering more refined searches up front, Google Suggest can make searching more convenient and efficient, because it eliminates the need to type the entire text of a query. In addition, the service can connect users with new query suggestions that are useful, intriguing, and fun.

Ah, so it’s going to think for me….I see.  And what on earth do they mean, "new query suggestions that are useful, intruguing, and fun" ???  Let’s not puff ourselves up too much kids…

So, what happens is that as you type in your search query, a drop-down menu appears with the most popular (I’m assuming) search terms for what you’ve typed so far.  I typed in "libr" and first on the list was Library of Congress.  Library was second.  That seems a little funny to me.  Annoyingly, Google Suggest also tries to auto-complete words as you type them in, so I type "ind" in and in the search field and it starts auto-completing (think auto-field completion here) with things I have no interest in.  Very distracting.

Two thumbs down from the LiB.  When the technology gets in the way of (literally) what you’re doing, it’s not a good thing.