In case youre wondering what Im on about, search suggestions is the handy drop down which appears as you type, providing related queries you might be interested in:

The feature has obviously been popular with users, as Google have announced their first update to the service. Youll now get suggestions in more places, personalized suggestions and you guessed it, sponsored links.

Lets take a look at each of these enhancements separately:

• Suggestions in more places - Youll now find search suggestions on Google results pages (SERPs) instead of just the main search page.
• Personalized suggestions " If youre logged into your Google account, youll now see personal suggestions based on repeated searches youve used before. These will also include a remove button in case you dont want to see them again.
• Sponsored Links " Putting it simply, youll now see ads in your suggestions. As Ive commented before, Googles strategy to protect advertising revenue during the recession has been to place ads everywhere they can. This is simply an extension of this plan.
  

Another minor change, Google have also removed the result count next to search terms as they found people were not finding them useful.

What does this mean for small business? Well if youre a Google advertiser, you now have even more places to reach out to potential customers with your Ads. For SEOs, it may be worthwhile revisiting the Google suggestions for your key search terms as this may influence what keywords your customers are searching for.

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