I have been using Google suggest as a dictionary since I first discovered the engine.

"The google suggestions actually are a pretty good roadmap though for anyone doing SEO. No more figuring out keywords when Google's happy to supply a list. take your favourite short tail search term, get google's list of related terms, check all those, and so on. Pretty soon you've got a pretty good list of search terms to be targetting. Now you're working on search terms we know Google's trying to drive traffic to."

and

"Suggest is on the home page AND in the Google Toolbar..
As for using it for an SEO "predictor"... it tells you how many results not how many people search for the term. And that's a double edge sword -- do you optimize for the kw that there are 1,000,000 results for and assume it popular or for the word that has 10,000 and try to corner the market?"

and

"I think this will have a profound effect on sites. Those that produce a lot of good content and have it driven to them via long tail searches will begin to see traffic wither as more SEO minded sites scoop up traffic by hammering all their efforts into capturing traffic from the "lazy" suggestions. And it will force webmasters to start focusing more and more on core phrases meaning the following outcome: in competitive niches, everything may boil down fighting over 10 or 15 phrases. And for the user, this will eventually mean for most core search phrases, finding a sea of results that all look the same, as far as title and topic."

and

"I see this completely changing SEO as we know it.

Before we use to code for what 'we think' ppl will type.

Now we need to code for what google 'will suggest'.

It's quicker to hit the down button a few times for a similar search phrase, rather then continue to type your original phrase and ppl will get used to doing this - very quickly

Users may even treat it (think of it) as a 'better search phrase' because 'Google' suggest it, not actually knowing any better".

and finally

" There is no doubt this consolidates search around a smaller number of terms, but at the same time, it encourages people to not do single-word searches. So I think it cuts off the tail, but it also spreads the top of the belly to the sides.
It also functions somewhat like StumbleUpon. If you can get something really intriguing in the suggestions for something really pedestrian, you'll probably see a crazy spike.

........................................

On the plus side, I put in some terms I rank well for and looked at what it suggested and there are some that are semi-related, which I'm sure I can rank for, but for which I have nothing currently. It's not a bad tool for seeing how Google clusters searches and prioritizes them, that's for sure".

Source: "Google Suggest" becomes default search box behavior

My boldings. Do you agree?

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