Early this month we talked about some news that Google removed “Scam” as an auto-suggestion in its search suggestion tool. It looks like we all celebrated too early because it is back in the suggestion box. If you do not know what I am speaking about, here is a little back story on what Google suggest is, why it is here, and why you should care about it.

What is Google Suggest
Google suggest is the feature that 90% of Googler’s have turned on. When you are on the Google site, and start to perform a search, Google will ‘suggest’ a search phrase. It looks a little like this:

According to Google, it enhances your search experience. For the most part, I think it works great and it allows for users to get to the information they are actually looking for quicker. It has some major negative implications however. I will get to those below.

How Does Google Decide what appears in a suggestion:
Just like most of Google’s algorithm, the actual technology sits in a black box. No one knows exactly how they come up with their result. There are a few items that definitely play a roll at some level, we have tested multiple theories against live results and have come up with these ones that are definitely involved:

1. Semantic Relevance – If someone is typing in “Las V” there is a 90% chance they are thinking of typing in Las Vegas, which Google will serve up. If they are trying to type in Las Vegas, there is a good chance they are looking for something in Las Vegas, which is why they then suggest terms like “Las Vegas Shows”, “Las Vegas Travel”, etc.
2. Previous Search Queries – If a majority of people who start a search phrase “Christina” always end up with “Aguilera” then they are going to use this history and Suggest “Aguilera” whenever someone is typing in “Christina”.
3. Anchor Text – Google looks at anchor linking (the text used in one of those blue underlined text links that you see all over the web) as a key indicator in their Google Suggestion. So the more times “Reputation Managers San Diego” pops up on the web, the more likely that suggestion will pop up in Google Suggest.
4. General Buzz – Google is now starting to look for consistent phrases that are generating buzz on Twitter, Digg, Reddit, etc.

The positive implications (suggesting keywords that people may not be privy to) is obvious, the negative implications are not as obvious, but I will provide some detail around it.

You may have seen it before, but if you ever type in a company name, there are a lot of times that Google ads the word “Scam, Rip Off, Complaints” to the list of suggestions. This is a very unfair and slanderous suggestion. If you are a company with any volume, you are going to have an unhappy customer here and there. But even if your unhappy customers is less than 1% of total happy customers, you have a high probability of having these negative suggests attached to your brand. Is this fair? I don’t think so.

Google experimented a couple of weeks ago and removed the word “Scam” from their suggestion. It was for only about a week, and it is back now, so no one is quite sure what it means. Google has been successfully sued by France and Italian governments and they are barred from using negative suggestions in their results. There are too many good companies out there that Google is otherwise telling the public that they are rip off artists.