The All New Google Suggest International Sucks

Published by djmick on April 2nd, 2009

google suggest

Google made a recent announcement on their official blog about updates to the Google Suggest feature.

“Today we’re happy to announce the international launch of Google Suggest. We’ve localized our suggestions to account for various cultural and local factors to offer suggestions that look familiar to our users.”

In simple terms this means that the suggested items with be more relevant depending on which country you are in whilst searching.

The first example given is this:

“If you type [liver] in the U.K., you’re probably a Liverpool fan (but in the U.S. you’ll get more suggestions about liver diseases):”

Mmm, so all 55 millions Brits are more likely to be Liverpool fans – I doubt it. The population of Liverpool is under half a million and if we throw into the mix that a fair number of them support Liverpool’s city rivals Everton then the number gets slashed again.

That is less than 1% of the population so I think it would be fair to assume that if you type ‘liver’ in the UK there’s a greater chance you’ll be looking for searches related to ‘liver diseases’, just like our American counterparts, rather than Liverpool football club.

This one was also good, “In Ireland, there are [pubs] everywhere:”

Now you’d expect Google to excel at this one what with them having Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Street View etc, etc.

Well you already know they failed otherwise I wouldn’t be pointing it out. Last time I checked a map, even a Google Map, Edinburgh was still on the east coast of Scotland.

google suggest