Have you ever wondered what would happen if you let Google decide your life for you? Given the increasing sophistication of the search algorithm and the closer integration of technology into our daily lives, we wondered what would happen if we let Google autocomplete our searches for us.
So for example, if you type ‘A’ into Google, what website would it want to take you to? Naturally we’d hope that it would take you to Aqueous Digital (maybe one day!) but which web ‘giants’ would Google put first in this experiment?
To do this we used a new browser with nothing in the cache and we made sure that we were not logged into Google. We also only used www.google.co.uk so we expect the .com would produce different results.
So, who were the winners and losers????
A
Amazon (of course…), Argos, Asda, Autotrader
B
BBC, BBC News, BBC Sport, BBC Weather
C
Currys, Comet, Cineworld, CBBC
D
Daily Mail, Debenhams, Dorothy Perkins, DVLA
E
eBay, Easyjet, eBay UK, Euromillions
F
Facebook, Friv, First Choice, Fantasy Football
G
Google, Google Maps, Gumtree, GMail
H
Hotmail, HSBC, Halifax, Homebase
I
Ikea, ITV Player, iPlayer, IMDB
J
John Lewis, Jobcentre, Just Eat, JD Sports
K
Kindle, Kizi, Kate Middleton, Kurt Geiger
L
Lloyds, Lottery, Linkedin, Lotto
M
Maps, Marks and Spencer, Matalan, MSN
N
Next, National Rail, New Look, Natwest
O
Olympics, O2, Olympic Tickets, Orange
P
Paypal, PC World, Play, Primark
Q
Quidco, QVC, Quiz, Quickquid
R
Rightmove, River Island, Ryanair, Royal Mail
S
Sky, Sainsburys, Sports Direct, Santander
T
Tesco, Twitter, TFL, Topshop
U
UCAS, UK Top 40, Urban Outfitters, Urban Dictionary
V
Virgin, Vue, Vodafone, Virgin Media
X
Xbox, X Factor, Xe, Xbox Live
Y
Youtube, Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Youtube Converter
Z
Zara, Zoopla, Zara UK, Zmovies
On the whole, there are few surprises in this list but we were interested to see that there is only one ‘person’ who makes the autocomplete list and that is Kate Middleton (we’re assuming that people looking for John Lewis and Kurt Geiger aren’t looking for people…).
Similarly, we were expecting to find Apple somewhere in the list, but apparently not. In fact, a number of ‘competitors’, such as Microsoft and Nokia are notable by their absence from this list.
So what can you take from this? Well, it seems if you want to start a new business online don’t start it with a ‘B’ as you won’t beat the BBC. Adding the ‘uk’ suffix after your name can also mean you get two entries in this list and apart from that, it shows that based on browsing Google autocomplete we lead fairly mundane lives!
Are there any obvious omissions from this list? We’re leaving comments open on this for a short while for you to add suggestions and we’d be interested in your thoughts?
