[JonnieCache]

My favourite was when it used to complete "chinese people are" with "aliens." extremely odd.

I also enjoyed it recently when the top result for "define an english person" was the wikipedia article "cunt." That one smacked of deliberate organisation.

Anyway, aren't the search autocomplete suggestions based on the distribution of n-grams in google's index, as much as in the search terms?

[jim-greer]

> I also enjoyed it recently when the top result for "define an english person" was the wikipedia article "cunt." That one smacked of deliberate organisation.

The funny thing about some of these is that they become victims of their own success - the bomb doesn't work now because all the results are for blogs, reddit, etc talking about the bomb.

> Anyway, aren't the search autocomplete suggestions based on the distribution of n-grams in google's index, as much as in the search terms?

My wife would know for sure, but I believe it is more based on search volume. When you type "hacker news" you get:

hacker news search

hacker news mobile

hacker news api

Pretty clear that it's getting those from search volume, not n-grams.

[andyking]

I regularly do a Google search for "Ofcom MCA maps", a rather specialist subject that takes you to the following page that's impossible to find on the website itself: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/radiolicensing/mcamaps/MCAs.h...

When I first searched on this, Google didn't suggest it at all, and the page itself was half-way down page 1. Now, it's up there at the top (even when logged-out). I can't imagine very many people search this term--so I can only assume my regular searches have pushed it into the search engine's consciousness.