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What Are We Searching For?The answers to today's crossword, Jewish baseball players, testicular comfort, and the right way to pronounce "Reuters."

By Josh Levin
Posted Friday, Aug. 3, 2007, at 6:08 PM ET

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Illustration by Robert Donnelly. Click to view expanded image.

Searching for stuff on the Web is typically a one-man job. Punch in your query, hit enter, and your computer hands over a list of the most relevant results. But searching doesn't have to be solitary. As we're typing away in our little vacuums, Google is collecting and storing what we write. Want to see what other people are curious about? Download the Google Toolbar, start typing, and you'll see a list of suggested queries: similar terms that other users often search for. For tech researchers, this is an incomparable tool for figuring out how and why we use search engines. For me, it's the makings of an endlessly fun parlor game that offers answers to mankind's enduring mysteries. What do we think about when we think about Tom Cruise? What are the most frequently mispronounced words in the English language? And when people write "my balls," what word usually comes next?

The idea of search suggestions has been around since at least 2004, when a software engineer named Kevin Gibbs built a simple application called Google Suggest as a personal project. Two years ago, the company integrated Suggest into the Google Toolbar. This year, the idea has gone mainstream: Search for something at Ask.com or Yahoo.com and you'll be greeted by a dropdown suggestion window.

How does Suggest work? Type the letter "p" into the Google Toolbar (or the Google Suggest homepage) and a small box billows down. In the top half is your search history—up to 10 recent search terms that start with "p." Below that is a list of 10 "p" phrases that Google thinks you might want to search for. The toolbar's 10 proposed searches: paris hilton, photobucket, paypal, pc world, pokemon, pizza hut, people search, post office, passport, people. Add an "i" and the list instantly changes: pizza hut, piczo, pirate bay, picasa, pictures, pink, pirates, pimp my profile, pirates of the caribbean.

On the most basic level, search suggestions are a boon for lazy typists. Punching in a long phrase is for suckers: If you want to Google "washington post," type "was," tap the down arrow a few times, and hit Enter. The dropdown box is also a subtle reminder that the more specific the query, the better the results. Search for "dog" and odds are you won't find what you're looking for. Type "dog" into Google Toolbar, and the options in the dropdown window—dog breeds, dog names, dog the bounty hunter, dogpile.com—will help you find your way.

Google doesn't reveal its search algorithms, but the company's engineers confirm that what we're looking at in the toolbar is, essentially, a list of the 10 most popular queries that start with a given prefix. (It's unclear what time period the suggestions are culled during, but a spokesman says they're generated from "recent [search] activity.") A suggestion-enabled search is like an instant popularity contest. Just type in a couple of letters, and you've got access to oodles of data on what your fellow Web surfers are hunting for.

The obvious first question: How popular am I? We've all self-Googled to see where we fall on the results page. Suggestions offer a whole new playing field for Web-based vanity. Type in "josh lev" and Google's ninth suggestion is "josh levin slate." The people have spoken! Alas, the people are slightly more interested in "josh levine tmz." Still, I'm one up on my Slate colleague Jack Shafer, whose name doesn't appear when you type "jack sh." Yes, he ranks below "jack shit."

There's also plenty of fodder for non-narcissists. The most-searched-for Paul? Some guy named Paul Sculfor, followed by Paul McCartney. Mary Kay edges out Maryland and Mary Poppins; Jane Norman is more popular than Jane Austen, Jane Fonda, or Jane Goodall. What do people want to know about Tom Cruise? The top two suggestions are "tom cruise movies" and "tom cruise height." Katie Holmes doesn't show up until the third entry, Oprah the sixth. Scientology doesn't appear at all.

Without Google, there would be no singalongs. No matter what you search for—"big" or "smile" or "kiss"—Suggest will think that you're in the market for song lyrics. Type in the name of any band, and requests for lyrics come up before anything else. (The links here and in the paragraphs below go to Google Suggest Explorer, a site that generates a list of Google's suggestions for any combination of search terms.)

Once you start looking for them, unexpected suggestions start popping up everywhere. Like most nerds, I spend a fair bit of time looking up the players on my fantasy baseball team. My searches are typically focused on things like statistics and injuries. Google, however, won't stop suggesting that I want to look up the player's "wife" or "girlfriend." Sure, you'd expect that for pin-ups like Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez. But Ryan Klesko, Ryan Theriot, and Mark Derosa? Really? Another strange baseball-related trend: There seem to be a bunch of searchers who wishfully append the word "Jewish" onto the names of vaguely Jewish-sounding athletes. Sorry, fellow Semites—Lance Berkman and Josh Phelps are not members of the tribe.

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Josh Levin is a Slate associate editor. You can e-mail him at .
Illustration by Robert Donnelly.
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Remarks from the Fray:

Google may have removed "Blacks are" but that seems to be about it. "Jews", "Islam" and "Muslims" all appear to be "evil" (but "Muslims are not terrorists" does beat out its counter part). Interestingly, "Americans" appear to be a bit slow, "whites" have a single disgusting entry and "Europeans" are without description.

All of this points to one issue with this data set: it appears to be a bit skewed. For years, search engines ignored common words, and many users got in the habit of searching with nouns and adjectives. The data is certainly interesting, but maybe what we are looking at is just the search history for Ted Stevens.

--sortaSean

(To reply, click here.)

My cousin, Ray, died this week and within 2 days, he was erased from this planet.

I wondered what Google Suggest thought of that.

Nothing there about his mouth cancer; or, the fact that he was way too young. Nothing on the 4 kids left behind. Just Ray Charles. And, Rachael Ray.

My cousin did not sing to the world; just in his bathroom shower. He did not cook for the world. Just for his family table.

I tried to add more information to Google suggest. I added his full name. Nada again. Then, I recalled his dad was Ray and he was Ray Jr. No time to review 4 million hits, but I suspect Jr and Sr are there somewhere. Perhaps the day of their birth; their wedding; their death obit. Can something happen anywhere on the planet and not be recorded somewhere on Google Suggest or other Search Engines?

Well Ray died and he isn't there. But you shoulda seen the room full of tears, laughter, memories, and love as people came to say "so long". Calls were made across the country and emails exchanged among our widespread family.

I began to suspect that "What are we Really Searching For" can not be reduced to ones and zeros and blipped into segmented storage compartments. Ray is very much alive in many hearts and memories. He is recorded on the tablets of many hearts for his kindness, gentle spirit, and thoughtful deeds. How could our mighty search engines miss that?

--WheresTheBeef

(To reply, click here.)

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