Misusing Google autocomplete
Google processes billions of search results every day. Leveraging the data associated with this traffic is part of the reason why Google is now worth $1,000,000,000,0001. Some of this data collection shows up in Google’s search autocomplete - as you type your search term, predicitions will appear in the search bar to help you get your results (and serve you ads) more quickly. Even WIRED has taken advantage, crowdsourcing whole interviews that ask celebrities “The Web’s Most Searched Questions”.
These autocomplete responses are a list of possible related search terms, sourced from billions of similar searches. But instead of light entertainment or a time-saving utility, search autocomplete can be also leveraged to find alternates.
For example, imagine I’m looking for video conferencing software and my stockbroker told me to invest in Zoom. But what if I want to explore other options? Google autocomplete can come to the rescue:
Type in what you’re looking for with a “vs” afterwards and let autocomplete do the rest. In their search autocomplete About page, Google notes that these are predictions, not suggestions.
They can’t stop us using them as suggestions.
Software and hardware give similarly effective results. There isn’t too high a limit on specificity - even some very specific queries have enough data to show helpful alternatives. It works down to the level of specific product codes, which is where it tends to be more useful than the crowdsourced recommendation sites like Alternativeto.com (and its alternatives).
This is a pretty basic tip, I’ll admit. Essentially it’s just a shortcut to searching for “X alternatives”. In my opinion, still useful in certain cases. Especially for when you’re planning your next holiday in 2022.
Twelve zeroes doesn’t feel like a real amount of zeroes. ↩