Google has updated their autocomplete feature (formerly Google Suggest), and some of the results are interesting. For a while, the suggestions were limited to related items — often to the brand or topic you searched.

So, when looking up “Company X,” I would expect to get that company’s name and maybe a list of their products, services, and popular pages…

For example:

The above search was slightly modified to prove a point, but the results above are what I’d typically expect to receive from a search. This type of search result is likely to become a thing of the past, and for some brands, it already has.

TheSEMPost and EvolvingSEO broke the news of this same feature being rolled out in their separate articles, but I wanted to test out a few queries and see who was affected and who might’ve gotten preferential treatment. (Searching for “Google” only returns Google related pages.)

Below are some of the results:


I see what you did there...

At the time of this testing — It’s safe to say that Google is focusing on retail companies to start. It’s that, or they haven’t gotten around to adding the same “rules” to themselves or Johnson and Johnson.

What does this mean for small or medium-sized businesses?

This feature won’t “affect” smaller businesses immediately, but small to medium-sized businesses can gain some ground on their competitors by being ahead of this curve on this one.

Google will always push to improve their users’ experience — Do yourself a favor and adopt their way of thinkin’.