Danny Sullivan has written the ultimate guide to how Google Instant autocomplete suggestions work. He put a lot of time, research and work into this piece, getting facts and confirmation from Google on all of it. Any SEO should really read it, so they fully understand the latest on how it works.
Danny broke it down as follows:
History of Google Suggestions
Google uses real searches for the list of suggestions
Suggestions can vary by Region & Language
Google uses previous searches for suggestions
Google ranks suggestions based on popularity and relevance
Google does de-duplication and spelling corrections
New, trending and freshness comes into play
Google removes suggestions for hate or violence, personally identifiable information, porn & adult-content, legally mandated removals and piracy-related suggestions
Can it be manipulated? Yes.
That is just the bulleted list, check out Danny’s post for context, examples, images and more.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
