How to use Google auto-complete to generate content

Google Auto-Complete
If you are stuck for a rhetorical question to use as a speech opening, or just want to see what is a popular about a topic, you can use Google to ask:

Why is [topic] so…

before pressing ‘Enter’ Google will kick in with an ‘auto-complete’ algorithm that predicts what you are searching for, based on how often past users have searched for a term.

The results are absolutely fascinating.

While Google might change over time, here’s the current results showing the first single word returned for a variety of places, people, pastimes and products that would be useful material for a speaker to comment on by noting that “People ask…I can tell you that in my experience…”:

Why is England so rainy
Why is Ireland so green
Why is Scotland so poor
Why is France so liberal
Why is the USA so hated

Why is New York City so big
Why is Dallas so boring
Why is Minneapolis so expensive
Why is Beijing so polluted
Why is the Equator so hot

Why is President Obama so arrogant
Why is John Lennon so influential
Why is Hitler so cool (!)
Why is Fox News so bad
Why is the BBC so good

Why is cycling so addictive
Why is chess so hard
Why is skiing so fun
Why is scuba diving so tiring
Why is cricket so popular

Why is sugar so addictive
Why is tobacco so popular
Why is lettuce so bitter
Why is Marmite so salty
Why is Vegemite so disgusting

Try it yourself and see. Simply enter the topic of your next speech into Google and let auto-complete suggest a word or phrase you can use as an opening.

Why is this so simple?

2 Comments so far
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Fascinating! I recall an Irish school kid created a “economic sentiment monitor” that basically was a text recognition and geographic location analysis of tweets from Ireland – the politicians were very interested… he showed areas with positive tweets in green and areas with more negative tweets in red… and updated the service in real time. Big Data has many guises!

Conor, personally I’ve never been able to figure out the difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, so more power to the school kid who could interest politicians of either party in that. I can only imagine that since the Celtic Tiger stopped roaring his monitor must have been red all over.



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