Have you been to Google today? If you do a search, you might notice that once you begin typing, Google automatically starts providing real-time suggestions, as well as how many results each of those keywords have. This option, Google Suggest, was previously available as a Google Labs opt-in but it’s now gonna be default for all of your Google searches. According to the Official Google Blog, everyone might not have this functionality yet, but it should be available within the week. It shows up for me off and on right now.
If you notice the results they provide though, they seem to be only showing very popular queries. Will this hurt sales coming in from long-tail searches? I guess it depends on how closely searchers look through the list, but I’m leaning towards yes. How much traffic it really takes away from a site though will probably be minimal. It’s a really helpful service to searchers, though, I have to give ’em that. I like it.
