Search suggest drop-down list

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Wikipedia's simplified search box (Vector 2010 - legacy skin). Wikipedia Search suggest drop down list.gif
Wikipedia's simplified search box (Vector 2010 - legacy skin).
Wikipedia's search box (Vector 2022 skin). Wikipedia - Search suggest drop-down list.gif
Wikipedia's search box (Vector 2022 skin).

A search suggest drop-down list is a query feature used in computing to show the searcher shortcuts, while the query is typed into a text box. Before the query is complete, a drop-down list with the suggested completions appears to provide options to select. The suggested queries then enable the searcher to complete the required search quickly. As a form of autocompletion, the suggestion list is distinct from search history in that it attempts to be predictive even when the user is searching for the first time. Data may come from popular searches, sponsors, geographic location or other sources. [1] [2] [3] These lists are used by operating systems, web browsers and various websites, particularly search engines. Search suggestions are common with a 2014 survey finding that over 80% of e-commerce websites included them. [4]

The computing science of syntax and algorithms are used to form search results from a database. Content management systems and frequent searches can assist software engineers in optimizing more refined queries with methods of parameters and subroutines. Suggestions can be results for the current query or related queries by words, time and dates, categories and tags. The suggestion list may be reordered by other options, as enumerative, hierarchical or faceted.

Although not the first deployment of search suggestions, Google Suggest is one of the most prominent. Four years before it was considered stable, the feature was developed in 2004 by Google engineer Kevin Gibbs and the name was chosen by Marissa Mayer. [5] Google, and other large search companies, maintain a blacklist that prevents the display of queries that could be interpreted as violating their social responsibility. Despite this, the company regularly receives complaints that several popular suggestions, or suggestions whose positions have been inflated by bots, should be added to this list. [3] [6] The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Jillian York has criticized Apple's blacklist for including words that are merely provocative. [7]

One example of a project using suggested queries to expose societal attitudes was a 2013 ad series called The Autocomplete Truth by UN Women. The campaign showed several gender stereotypes being displayed as popular searches by Google Suggest. [8] Another was a story by Bad Astronomy that revealed a distrustful perspective on scientists in the suggestion box. [9] Additionally, cases related to libel laws have posited that suggestions may inspire people to associate specific names with specific alleged crimes when they would not have otherwise. [10] [11]

Some users have criticized the fact that suggestion-enabled text boxes, unlike the web forms of static HTML, send data about each keystroke to a central server. [12] Such data has the potential to identify specific people. This has caused at least one Mozilla Firefox developer to opine that "users mostly dislike search suggestions". [13] Apart from the privacy debate, some users have expressed negative reception over the usefulness of search autocompletion. [10] [14] Specifically, the sudden appearance of a suggestion box in some programs has been compared to the behaviour of a pop-up ad. [15] [16]

HTML supports this feature using the <datalist> element. [17]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Search</span> Search engine from Google

Google Search is a search engine operated by Google. It allows users to search for information on the Internet by entering keywords or phrases. Google Search uses algorithms to analyze and rank websites based on their relevance to the search query. It is the most popular search engine worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Autocomplete</span> Computing feature predicting ending to a word a user is typing

Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In Android and iOS smartphones, this is called predictive text. In graphical user interfaces, users can typically press the tab key to accept a suggestion or the down arrow key to accept one of several.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Incremental search</span> User interface method to search for text

In computing, incremental search, also known as hot search, incremental find or real-time suggestions, is a user interface interaction method to progressively search for and filter through text. As the user types text, one or more possible matches for the text are found and immediately presented to the user. This immediate feedback often allows the user to stop short of typing the entire word or phrase they were looking for. The user may also choose a closely related option from the presented list.

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OpenSearch is a collection of technologies that allow the publishing of search results in a format suitable for syndication and aggregation. Introduced in 2005, it is a way for websites and search engines to publish search results in a standard and accessible format.

Contextual advertising is a form of targeted advertising for advertisements appearing on websites or other digital platforms, such as content displayed in mobile browsers. Contextual targeting involves the use of linguistic factors to control the placement of advertising material. The advertisements are selected and delivered by automated systems, taking into consideration the context of a user's search or browsing behaviour. As advertisers and marketers increasingly prioritise brand safety and suitability, contextual advertising has emerged as a crucial aspect in safeguarding the reputation and value of a brand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Search engine</span> Software system for finding relevant information on the Web

A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages and other relevant information on the Web in response to a user's query. The user inputs a query within a web browser or a mobile app, and the search results are often a list of hyperlinks, accompanied by textual summaries and images. Users also have the option of limiting the search to a specific type of results, such as images, videos, or news.

A search engine results page (SERP) is a webpage that is displayed by a search engine in response to a query by a user. The main component of a SERP is the listing of results that are returned by the search engine in response to a keyword query.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HTTP referer</span> HTTP header field

In HTTP, "Referer" is an optional HTTP header field that identifies the address of the web page, from which the resource has been requested. By checking the referrer, the server providing the new web page can see where the request originated.

Social search is a behavior of retrieving and searching on a social searching engine that mainly searches user-generated content such as news, videos and images related search queries on social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Flickr. It is an enhanced version of web search that combines traditional algorithms. The idea behind social search is that instead of ranking search results purely based on semantic relevance between a query and the results, a social search system also takes into account social relationships between the results and the searcher. The social relationships could be in various forms. For example, in LinkedIn people search engine, the social relationships include social connections between searcher and each result, whether or not they are in the same industries, work for the same companies, belong the same social groups, and go the same schools, etc.

Keyword research is a practice search engine optimization (SEO) professionals use to find and analyze search terms that users enter into search engines when looking for products, services, or general information. Keywords are related to search queries.

A search box, search field or search bar is a graphical control element used in computer programs, such as file managers or web browsers, and on web sites. A search box is usually a single-line text box or search icon with the dedicated function of accepting user input to be searched for in a database. Search boxes on web pages are usually used to allow users to enter a query to be submitted to a Web search engine server-side script, where an index database is queried for entries that contain one or more of the user's keyword research.

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A selection-based search system is a search engine system in which the user invokes a search query using only the mouse. A selection-based search system allows the user to search the internet for more information about any keyword or phrase contained within a document or webpage in any software application on their desktop computer using the mouse.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Safe Browsing</span> Service that warns about malicious URLs

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Flu Trends</span> Former web service operated by Google

Google Flu Trends (GFT) was a web service operated by Google. It provided estimates of influenza activity for more than 25 countries. By aggregating Google Search queries, it attempted to make accurate predictions about flu activity. This project was first launched in 2008 by Google.org to help predict outbreaks of flu.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brave (web browser)</span> Chromium-based open-source web browser

Brave is a free and open-source web browser developed by Brave Software, Inc. based on the Chromium web browser. Brave is a privacy-focused browser, which automatically blocks most advertisements and website trackers in its default settings. Users can turn on optional ads that reward them for their attention in the form of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT), which can be used as a cryptocurrency or to make payments to registered websites and content creators.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cliqz</span> Web browser developed by Cliqz GmbH

Cliqz was a privacy-oriented web browser and search engine developed by Cliqz GmbH and majority-owned by Hubert Burda Media. It was available as a desktop and mobile web browser as well as an extension for Firefox itself.

Local search engine optimization is similar to (national) SEO in that it is also a process affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's unpaid results often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results. In general, the higher ranked on the search results page and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users; these visitors can then be converted into customers. Local SEO, however, differs in that it is focused on optimizing a business's online presence so that its web pages will be displayed by search engines when users enter local searches for its products or services. Ranking for local search involves a similar process to general SEO but includes some specific elements to rank a business for local search.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Searx</span> Metasearch engine

Searx is a free and open-source metasearch engine, available under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, with the aim of protecting the privacy of its users. To this end, Searx does not share users' IP addresses or search history with the search engines from which it gathers results. Tracking cookies served by the search engines are blocked, preventing user-profiling-based results modification. By default, Searx queries are submitted via HTTP POST, to prevent users' query keywords from appearing in webserver logs. Searx was inspired by the Seeks project, though it does not implement Seeks' peer-to-peer user-sourced results ranking.

References

  1. ↑ Sandvoid, Vegard (2008-12-14). "Google's new search suggestions may kill your website". Things On Top. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  2. ↑ Basch, Diego (2012-09-19). "Search for Obama on Facebook and you get Romney" . Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  3. 1 2 Sullivan, Danny (2011-04-06). "How Google Instant's autocomplete suggestions work". Search Engine Land. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  4. ↑ Holt, Christian (2014-08-18). "The current state of e-commerce search". Smash Magazine. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  5. ↑ Gannes, Liz (2013-08-23). "Nearly a Decade Later, the Autocomplete Origin Story: Kevin Gibbs and Google Suggest". All Things D. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  6. ↑ Searle, Rick (2015-02-22). "Truth and Prediction in the Dataclysm". Utopia or Dystopia. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  7. ↑ Keller, Michael (2013-07-16). "The Apple 'Kill List': What your iPhone doesn't want you to type". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  8. ↑ Griner, David (2013-10-24). "After viral success of inequality ads, creators say they will expand campaign". Ad Week. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  9. ↑ Plait, Phil (2013-12-04). ""Scientists are..."". Slate. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  10. 1 2 Bloch, Michael (2012-03-27). "Some Folks *Really* Hate Autocomplete". Taming The Beast. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  11. ↑ Karapapa, Stavroula; Borghi, Maurizio (2015). "Search engine liability for autocomplete suggestions: personality, privacy and the power of the algorithm". International Journal of Law and Information Technology. 23: 261–289. Archived from the original on 2016-12-05. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  12. ↑ Keeshin, Jeremy (2011-08-18). "Who does Facebook think you are searching for?". The Keesh. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  13. ↑ Newman, Richard (2015-08-25). "Recall and display search history within main browser UI". Mozilla. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  14. ↑ Arnold, Stephen (2012-09-09). "Google Autocomplete: Is Smart Help A Hindrance?". Beyond Search. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  15. ↑ Martens, Jeff (2008-07-09). "Disabling Open Office's Stupid Autocomplete". Martes-Martes. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  16. ↑ Smithers, Mike (2012-01-28). "Turning off code completion in SQLDeveloper — A grumpy old man fights back". The Anti-Kyte. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
  17. ↑ "<datalist> - HTML: Hypertext Markup Language". MDN Web Docs. Mozilla. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
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