The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
Google Autocomplete (often referred to as Google Suggest) is one of the first Google search developments that appeared on SEOs’ radar.
Many years ago, Google Suggest was what powered Google Instant[1] results, making a huge impact on users’ searching journeys. SEOs have been using it as a free keyword research tool.
Yet there’s much more to this search feature, especially after all the updates Google has introduced, turning Google Autocomplete into a smart and predictive platform of its own.
What is Google Autocomplete?
Google Autocomplete allows users to easily complete their query by suggesting possible extensions of what they are currently typing:
Google’s suggestions are dynamic — they instantly change as you’re typing your query. Google is trying to predict what a user means to type. These predictions are likely to impact the searching behaviors as people may instinctively choose a suggestion they never meant to type. In other words, Google’s Autocomplete should be an SEO priority.
But there’s another factor making the feature very important for any digital marketing strategy: By default, it delivers suggestions in the address bars of at least three of the most popular browsers: Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari.
Here’s Chrome’s address bar, which suggests search terms (and auto-completes them) as you type.
Now imagine that your domain is plumber.com and that’s your customer trying to type in your domain name.
This means that in many cases, users will be prompted to search even when they had no intention to, and they will search for the terms that were suggested by Google.
How do Google’s Autocomplete predictions work?
Google’s Autocomplete predictions rely on actual users’ popular