Google experiments with mobile search query suggestions
May 28, 2008
Google knows better
Google Inc. plans to build a usage model of query suggestions for users visiting its mobile search page, since typing text using the standard 9-key mobile phone may be hard and time-consuming.
The Mountain View, CA-based search giant reports that the average query on its mobile search page is 15 letters long, but takes 30 key presses and approximately 40 seconds to enter. Overall, Google believes that mobile phone users will rely heavily on suggestions if they are provided.
“We all know that using the Web on mobile phones can be a challenge sometimes,” said Steve Kanefsky, software engineer at Google, in his blog.
“Compared to our personal computers, the screens are smaller, it's more difficult to navigate and enter text, the network connections are slower, and the browsers lack many of the features we've become accustomed to," he said. "I deal with this every day as both a developer and a user of mobile Web applications.”
In an effort to improve the mobile search experience, Google studied usage patterns of a query suggestion system through a series of experiments.
A no-brainer
Google used its employees for the experiment. The company chose 30 users who owned Motorola Razr phones. A single phone type was used to eliminate confusion. The users consisted of 11 engineers, five sales reps, six product managers and eight employees from other departments.
No users were chosen from groups working with mobile products.
Each user was given a phone with an instrumented Java application. At the start of the study, users were told that they would be entering 23 queries on a mobile phone and then be asked a series of questions regarding their own preferences and experience.
These users were also advised to commit the query to memory when it was presented, as it would not be displayed on the query input screen.
No mention was made of the query suggestions.
The users reported that they saved, on average, approximately half of the key presses compared to users who were not shown suggestions, despite no decrease in time to enter a query.
Users also accepted suggestions when the process of doing so resulted in an increase in the number of total key presses. The number of key presses and amount of time needed to enter a query reveal that the presence of query suggestions may actually slow the number of key presses per second.
Even though it did not take less time to type in queries with the suggestions present, 100 percent of the users who were shown suggestions accepted at least one.
So, if the correct suggestion appears in the query suggestion list, users will scroll down and accept it rather than complete the query by typing an overwhelming majority of the time.
“To help our mobile users, we studied the effect of incorporating a feature like Google Suggest on mobile phones with 9-key keypads,” said Maryam Kamvar, software engineer at Google, in her blog. “We found that these users respond favorably to query suggestions.”