John’s Jottings

Fresh from the “Google Labs”:http://labs.google.com/ - Google Suggest. Try it out - as you type your search Google will suggest keywords in realtime - presumably driven by most popular searches. What I really like about this is that sometimes you have to think hard for a secondary or tertiary keyword and you benefit by seeing what others have used. For example today I needed to do some research on response.redirect - using Google Suggest after I hit the space after redirect I saw exactly what I knew I was looking for - and after using that search term I was right.

I thought it would be interesting to take a snapshot of what Google Suggests for single character searches, along with the Feeling Lucky hit:

|Char|Term|URL|
|a|amazon|”http://www.amazon.com”:http://www.amazon.com|
|b|best buy|”http://www.bestbuy.com/”:http://www.bestbuy.com/|
|c|cnn|”http://www.cnn.com/”:http://www.cnn.com/|
|d|dictionary|”http://dictionary.reference.com/”:http://dictionary.reference.com/|
|e|ebay|”http://www.ebay.com/”:http://www.ebay.com/|
|f|firefox|”http://www.mozilla.org/”:http://www.mozilla.org/|
|g|games|”http://games.yahoo.com/”:http://games.yahoo.com/|
|h|hotmail|”http://login.passport.net/uilogin.srf?id=2″:http://login.passport.net/uilogin.srf?id=2|
|i|ikea|”http://www.ikea.com/”:http://www.ikea.com/|
|j|jokes|”http://www.jokes.com/”:http://www.jokes.com/|
|k|kazaa|”http://www.kazaa.com/us/index.htm”:http://www.kazaa.com/us/index.htm|
|l|lyrics|”http://www.lyrics.com/”:http://www.lyrics.com/|
|m|mapquest|”http://www.mapquest.com/”:http://www.mapquest.com/|
|n|news|”http://www.cnn.com/”:http://www.cnn.com/|
|o|online dictionary|”http://dictionary.reference.com/”:http://dictionary.reference.com/|
|p|paris hilton|”http://www.cyberturf.com/freepictures/Hilton/Paris.html”:http://www.cyberturf.com/freepictures/Hilton/Paris.html|
|q|quotes|”http://www.quotationspage.com/”:http://www.quotationspage.com/|
|r|recipes|”http://www.allrecipes.com/”:http://www.allrecipes.com/|
|s|spybot|”http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html”:http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html|
|t|tara reid|”http://www.cinema-stars.com/TaraReid/”:http://www.cinema-stars.com/TaraReid/|
|u|ups|”http://www.ups.com/”:http://www.ups.com/|
|v|verizon|”http://www22.verizon.com/”:http://www22.verizon.com/|
|w|weather|”http://www.weather.com/”:http://www.weather.com/|
|x|xbox|”http://www.xbox-scene.com/”:http://www.xbox-scene.com/|
|y|yahoo|”http://www.yahoo.com/”:http://www.yahoo.com/|
|z|zip codes|”http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.jsp”:http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.jsp|
|0|02|”http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2000-02.html”:http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2000-02.html|
|1|1|”http://www.mozilla.org/”:http://www.mozilla.org/|
|2|2004 election|”http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/”:http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/|
|3|3m|”http://www.3m.com/index.jhtml”:http://www.3m.com/index.jhtml|
|4|411|”http://www.canada411.ca/”:http://www.canada411.ca/|
|5|50 cent|”http://www.50cent.com/”:http://www.50cent.com/|
|6|60 minutes|”http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml”:http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml|
|7|7th heaven|”http://www.thewb.com/Shows/Show/0,7353,%7C%7C152,00.html”:http://www.thewb.com/Shows/Show/0,7353,%7C%7C152,00.html|
|8|89.com|”http://www.89.com/”:http://www.89.com/|
|9|911|”http://911digitalarchive.org/”:http://911digitalarchive.org/|

A few things I found interesting in this list:

* Microsoft didn’t have m nor the top search for the x hit - xbox
* “cnn”:http://www.cnn.com made the list 3 times
* “mozilla.org”:http://www.mozilla.org “dictionary.com”:http://www.dictionary.com and “yahoo”:http://www.yahoo.com made it twice each.

I’ll try to remember to go through it again next year (when it will no doubt still be in beta).

p(update). [UPDATE] - The “Google Alphabet”:http://labs.patrickgaskill.com/googlealphabet/ automates this so I won’t need to do by hand next year. Maybe they can add the code to pull the Feeling Lucky hit as well as I think that’s an interesting addition I haven’t seen with anyone else who has gone through this list. Yes, I wasn’t the only geek to do it.