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Google Suggest is the relatively recent feature from Google that brings up the suggestions for our search terms while we type based on popular searches. You’ve likely encountered this multiple times by now – you start typing your search query, and up comes a suggestion for what it thinks you mean. If it’s anywhere close to the correct term you were going for then most of us will just select it and hit enter or left click and save ourselves some time and effort writing the rest of the three words we were probably going to write…

While this has probably prevented many cases of RSI however, the motivations behind its creation probably weren't entirely altruistic. Rather Google probably created the tool for their own gain, and as a way to ramp up their AdWords profits even higher. Here's how it works…

Why Does Google Suggest?

The basic idea of the Google suggest feature to bring up the most popular terms being searched for right now and that way second guess what we want even before we know it. Sometimes this just saves us typing, but it can also show us trends (without having to use the keyword tool) and it can sometimes show us relevant terms that we didn’t know to search for previously.

At the same time though then, this means that people are clustering even more around those keywords than they would previously be – instead of typing them out in their words, they’re being presented with the term everyone else is using and probably just opting to go with that. Gone is much of the variation in keywords and phrases, and suddenly search terms have the ability to essentially go viral.

When you consider how Adwords works this is really rather genius. As we all know Adwords works on a bidding basis, and that means that the advertiser who out bits the competition is the advertiser most likely to win and get their advert seen more often. And of course the way to drive up the costs in a bidding war? That's to get more people bidding on the same item.

The Google Suggest tool then does exactly that by driving more visitors to use the same key words when looking at particular topics thus creating hotter properties for the advertisers to bid on. Instead of each getting their own little version of the same keyphrase, they now all have to outbid each other for the same one – because it’s the one that’s getting all the traffic.

The Implications

Obviously the main implication for this is going to be for advertisers who pay more for Adwords thanks to the clever maneuvering of Google – no wonder the costs for advertisers are higher than ever before.

At the same time though it's also interesting to look at in terms of the interconnected nature of the web – what affects one aspect of the internet can have knock on impacts on the rest. The simple fact that more people are searching for a certain term online means that more people will end up bidding on that topic and the cost of advertising on that subject will go up – which could then theoretically effect the number of people who search for it in the long term again (by increasing awareness).

What's important for webmasters who don't have large amounts of cash at their disposal to remember though is of course that it's still (just about) possible to get to the top of the SERPs on the key phrases you want the old fashioned way – through SEO and marketing – and actually the suggest feature can be similarly useful for you if you use it to find popular phrases before they’re reflected even in the keywords tool. And the good news about this strategy is that it's longer lasting than AdWords and means you can choose a real spread of competitive and more niche terms – without breaking the bank.

The author of this article, Jeet is a SEO analysts and internet marketing expert. Through this article, he inform reader on how Google Suggests works and how it affects their revenue. He has founded a SEO and link-building company called GetLinksPro. You can also follow him on twitter @getlinkspro.

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