I’ve just been doing some searches in Google, as I do and noticed Google’s “Something Different” suggestions box. I have to confess this is something that I’ve not noticed before, so I thought I’d mention it in the below including some ideas for how you might use it.
The Something Different box appears when you perform a short search in Google. An example of this is the keyword “Bookshop” which creates the Something Different terms shown in the image. These terms are similar to the term Bookshop and show Google’s understanding of related search terms, connecting Bookshops and Record Shops.
This selection of alternative searches works differently from the Related Searches box which you often get at the bottom of the SERPs in Google. Related searches show variations of the keyword you have searched on and are based on the observed behaviour of Google’s visitors when they refine their initial search query.
Interestingly the related searches suggestions from Google for the term “Bookshop” only expand on the term Bookshop rather than going into other types of shop similar to bookshops.
When Something Different was launched by Google they explained this was a tool to help users explore a topic, but it might also be useful for you when looking at the keywords to use for your search marketing activities.
Interestingly when you do a search in Google for Google (strange behaviour I know) the list under Something Different contains Yahoo, Altavista, Lycos, AOL and Live Search, but hasn’t been updated to include Bing, despite Bing being live for quite some time and having an increasingly large share of the market place according to recent research.
