May I Offer You a Suggestion?

Posted by Alexis Battle, Software Engineer

We're always working on ways that you, our Australian users, can find what you're looking for more easily and quickly. In addition to the many things we do behind the scenes, such as constantly improving our search algorithms and crawling for more information to provide the best answer, we also look for ways to help you when you don't know what exactly to type into the search box to get to the perfect result.

This task has now become easier in Australia.

Now, when you are looking for information on a specific topic, we offer query suggestions at the bottom of the search results page that you can click on to find information faster. Sometimes, the suggestions allow you to quickly narrow down the search. We'll also present interesting related concepts that encourage you to explore further. In both cases, these algorithmically generated suggestions are shown only when they are the most helpful and useful, so you shouldn't expect them for all your queries.

For instance, when I was looking for information on netball (we probably need to practice to beat eBay), I got query suggestions for netball rules, netball drills, as well as an interesting related search on basketball.

Here are some other examples: national parks, scuba diving and Powderfinger.

So let us help you when you don't know quite what you're looking for!