Have you heard of a service called "Autocomplete Engagement?"

[RachelEm]

One of our clients was approached by a company selling a service they're calling "autocomplete engagement," which they're claiming has the ability to manipulate the auto-suggest feature of Google. They are not selling content, or technical SEO, and claim that the average "SEO guy" cannot garner the results they can.

My questions are: a) has anyone heard of this tactic, and b) can it really be done? c) if it can be done, what can a company do to manipulate that information beyond a strong technical SEO and content strategy?

[Highland]

"Autocomplete engagement" sounds like a terrible name for a reality TV show.

Haven't heard of it. Considering that it's Google's best guess as to what you're typing, and it's based on what other users have searched, I wouldn't say it's impossible. But the catch is you need to know exactly what your users are typing in. Let's say you sell dialysis equipment. You would need to know if your users are searching "dialysis machine", vs "how do dialysis machines work" (and those represent two very different searches). You then need to rank well for that term.

The only thing I can assume is they're going to somehow flood Google with clicks on a term. Done hundreds, or even thousands of times, I could see it working to some extent. But any successes would be transient (this is the reason why mechanisms like Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird exist in the first place). As such, I place little stock in it.

[WhiteboardCreations]

Rachel,

The gimmicks I've heard are countless. The clients feared into buying a product/service are countless. Yet, this is a new one I haven't heard about. I'll put it this way, if you are promoting a service which is "KILLER" and "WILL GET RESULTS" then you had better just show up for the service name in Google, at the very least, right? I wouldn't worry about this "company" and/or "service" and be upfront with your clients about how these types of solicitations will be frequent and annoying.

I'm sure you already did this, but I wanted to do it also and share with the community. First, begin typing in "Autocomplete Engagement" into Google. You can clearly see you have to type out the whole phrase and yet you don't get one single "Instant" result in the drop down menu. Unfortunately, I already entered and searched the whole phrase, so that's why you see it in my search history AND also this post in my screenshot. No results for their SUPERIOR SEO TRICK

Second, when you do search the entire phrase, you get nothing about any mention of an SEO service. Hell, this question is already ranked on 1st page for that term. Scratching my head. Show this to your clients and then let them know it's just another scare tactic to get them to spend some money... I mean waste money.

Hope this was a helpful response! - Patrick

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[RachelEm]

Thanks Patrick - I had tested it myself in Google and saw the same results you did. I assumed this was some crazy gimmick, but wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something that's "up-and-coming," you know? Plus, of course, the client was all pumped about being FIRST ON GOOGLE FOR EVERYTHING and I wanted definite answers to talk them off the ledge with

[WhiteboardCreations]

No worries and good idea to toss the question of concern out to the Moz community. In the future, if it's anything having to do with Google or any new "up and coming" solution or search criteria change, then check with Google first, then check the Blogs here at Moz or elsewhere because I'm sure content writers would LOVE to be the first to hit on a new idea for how to rank in Google.

Hopefully you can put your clients at ease

• Patrick