The ABCs of Google search recommendations

If you’ve ever Googled something, you may notice that Google likes to suggest search queries for you. Besides being occasionally helpful, these queries give you an interesting insight into the Internet hive mind. I got bored tonight and decided to see what Google recommended for each letter of the alphabet. While many of these were major businesses or dead celebrities and therefore unsurprising results, some of these results were surprising to be in the top ten.

A: addicting games. Hey, people need something to do at work when no one’s looking. Unsurprisingly, there are over five million results for addicting games, so there’s no shortage of options.

B: baby names. I’m a writer, so I appreciate a good name. Besides checking to make sure your new child’s name doesn’t have any unfortunate origins, names are just fun to look at. Bing gets an honorable mention just for taking me back to one of my first Internet memories: my dad searching for search engines… on a search engine. Also, is Bank of America’s website so bad that the bank shows up twice in the top ten? People are getting desperate here.

C: Club Penguin. This appears to be a Disney website for kids who were born in the 21st century or close to it. But $5.95 per month for membership? Even a six-year-old can find online entertainment for less than that. They can even (gasp) read a book. You know, one with pages and stuff.

D: No major surprises, though David Carradine does make an appearance. The double presence of Dictionary.com shows that the Internet really is serving as a replacement for a dictionary. I own a dictionary that is two inches thick, but the less fortunate turn to the Internet. Seriously, though? It’s dictionary.com. Not a hard site to remember unless you can’t spell ‘dictionary’.

E: Erin Andrews. Apparently she’s a sportscaster, and a lot of guys find her hot. Somehow I’m not surprised. Edible arrangements also deserve a mention here, but at least that’s interesting and (let’s face it) not always easy to make.

F: free online games. People are apparently very bored at work. Can people really not find Facebook’s login page? News flash:  You can log in from the home page, something Googlers are also having trouble finding.

G: Six of the ten are Google-related, with google.com coming up as top result. That’s it. I’m finishing this tomorrow. Good night.

One could also do this for two consecutive letters, three consecutive letters, and every n consecutive letters, but I didn’t because 1) I’m not that bored, and 2) for every letter one adds, the number of possibilities increases 26-fold. I’ll pass on that.

Fun fact: Googling xtqa yields no recommendations and what appears to be a bunch of spam sites. Now that I’ve set myself up for such comments, let the games begin.