{"id":168236,"date":"2017-10-03T13:00:45","date_gmt":"2017-10-03T13:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/premium.wpmudev.org\/blog\/?p=168236"},"modified":"2017-10-03T04:42:09","modified_gmt":"2017-10-03T04:42:09","slug":"google-autocomplete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/google-autocomplete\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Smart With: Google Autocomplete and WordPress"},"content":{"rendered":"

If your business or website is brand new, it can be difficult trying to figure out what your audience wants or expects from you\u2014mostly because they don\u2019t exist yet.<\/p>\n

Until you have large droves of traffic coming to your site that you\u2019re able to analyze or a huge database of email subscribers or social followers that are willing to engage with you, how do you find out what your audience wants?<\/p>\n

Market research is absolutely necessary for anyone who wants to create a viable business that can compete in the marketplace. That said, conducting market research can be rather expensive and time-consuming. While you could hire someone to manage this for you or you could invest in a pricey set of tools to aggregate the data, why don\u2019t you start by using a tool we all have easy and free access to?<\/p>\n

Google.<\/p>\n

Autocomplete can turn up some pretty crazy results sometimes.<\/p>\n

Like when you type \u201cI ate a\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"I
Autocomplete at work.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Or when you want to know \u201cWhere does\u2026\u201d (not sure why Bill Cosby is one of the top suggestions!)<\/p>\n

\n
\"Google
Where does…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Or when Google is a few years behind the Harry Potter<\/em> train when it tries to answer \u201cWhy doesn\u2019t\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"Google
Why doesn’t…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

For the most part, though, Google\u2019s autocomplete tool is actually a great resource, especially if you want to get to know your audience better. It\u2019s also a good way to find out what sort of long-tail search terms are being used as it pertains to your company, services, products, niche, and even web design.<\/p>\n

So, please join me as I look at the various ways in which you can use autocomplete as a market research tactic for your WordPress website. I\u2019ll also review a couple WordPress plugins that can add autocomplete functionality to your site, in case you want your own personalized set of autocomplete insights to work from.<\/p>\n

A Little Background on Autocomplete<\/h2>\n

Google was officially launched in 1998, so it\u2019s had roughly two decades to gather data on how people interact with the Internet. Having observed how people use search for so long, it makes sense that such a powerful feature like autocomplete would eventually evolve from it.<\/p>\n

Kevin Gibbs, a former Google employee, came up with the idea for and helped launch autocomplete functionality<\/a> back in 2004. It wasn\u2019t until 2008, however, that it became a mainstay on Google and not just an optional feature users could opt into.<\/p>\n

Despite Gibbs\u2019 major contribution to search and furthering the convenience factor of the Google search engine, he believes that someone would\u2019ve eventually come up with the technology for autocomplete. \u201cI don’t feel when I look at a search box that it’s something I did. It feels like this is just how the world’s supposed to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is how Google defines autocomplete<\/a> today:<\/p>\n

“When you start a search on Google, you can find the information you\u2019re looking for faster using search predictions. Search predictions are possible search terms you can use that are related to the terms you\u2019re typing and what other people are searching for.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are also two other factors that can come into play with autocomplete:<\/p>\n