I love Google Search because when I search for something, there’s some magic Fortune Teller that Google has locked up in a server room somewhere that knows exactly what I’m looking for.

So I was excited by the recent launch of Google Suggest, the new auto-complete on Google’s home page. As you start type, Google’s servers are busy finding and returning related search terms. This is a great idea, but the results don’t seem nearly as precise as I’ve come to expect from Google. I’m guessing the Fortune Teller does better when responding to full terms than to just a few letters.

My suggestion for making these results more on target is to personalize them. Google knows my search history, and the types of things I search for. Therefore they should be able to give me better responses in Google Suggest.

This is noticeably missing because I’m used to using the Google Search box built into Firefox. This search box has an auto-complete which includes both my recent search terms (at the top) and other matching (non-personalized) results below. While only the top part of the list is personalized, the top matches have been valuable enough that I will continue to use this over Google Suggest.

One side effect of implementing this sort of functionality is that the more personalized your results become, the less diverse they might be. But I’m sure the genius’ at Google can figure this out too.