Here's how Google 'knows' what you are searching for

NEW DELHI: Google Search is one of the biggest and most used products by the firm. The application is something that we use almost every day. What powers it is a complex set of algorithms. These not only act when showing thousands of relative results in ‘0.03’ seconds but also power the platform’s autocomplete predictions, making the entire search experience better and quicker.

The search giant recently in a blog post revealed how the search autocomplete prediction works and how it filters inappropriate results based on different parameters.

Before detailing how the autocomplete prediction works, Google Search adviser, Danny Sullivan makes it clear that these autocomplete results are predictions, not suggestions. This means that Google can, at the best, predict what users what and can’t be a sure shot, giving them related suggestions.


Sullivan says that Google determines predictions by looking “at the real searches that happen on Google and show common and trending ones relevant to the characters that are entered and also related to your location and previous searches.”

Google’s prediction also changes as the user types in new characters in the search box. For instance, if a customer is typing ‘San F’, the complex algorithms will show ‘San Francisco’ related results. However, typing ‘San Fe’ will scrap those thousands of results and bring the next popular or trending topic, determined by different parameters like your interest, location and more, in the prediction results.

The tech giant also removes some predictions that fall against their autocomplete policies. These include sexually explicit predictions, hateful predictions, violent predictions, dangerous and harmful activity predictions. In addition to this, Google also removes predictions that it thinks is spam, are closely related to piracy or in response to valid legal requests.

Furthermore, Sullivan adds that the number of search autocomplete prediction results vary from device to device. On desktop users usually see up to 10 results while on mobile, users see around five results as the screen size is less. The search giant is also working to reduce the number of inappropriate autocomplete results.