When you make your living working with the social web, expect the unexpected. Even for the most focused digital marketer or (dare I say) social media expert, a simple click-of-a-link and your day’s trajectory can be completely changed.  All it takes is one wacky Tweet, interesting Stumble, shiny object or in this case, Google autocomplete and you find yourself on tangents you never imagined.  This is what happened yesterday as I was innocently researching for a blog on Lady Gaga.

The blog topic was simple, topical and exciting — Everything I know about marketing, I learned from Lady Gaga.  Good, right? (Turns out the topic was so good, HupSpot wrote the blog last month. BAH!) To kick-off writing my Gaga masterpiece, I’ve got to do some research. {Rubs hands together} Google here I come!

With Chrome already firing, I begin to type in the search bar. L - A - D … and BAM! Only three letters in and Google autocomplete is already on to me with a full list of suggested search queries related to Lady Gaga. That’s when I see it, about three or four suggestions down, in pixel perfect black and white — Lady Gaga is a man.

You don’t say?

{CLICK}

And so it begins — Google presents me with a plethora of sites claiming to have evidence that Lady Gaga is in fact a man. I find myself reading articles on eonline and snopes. I check out the Facebook Fanpage dedicated to the topic. I hit up YouTube and rock out to a few Gaga tunes while deep in research.  Everything I never knew I wanted to know about Lady Gaga was at my fingertips.

While perusing the virtual mother-load of information, I find myself intently staring at pictures of Lady Gaga’s crotch. It was then that my boss walks through the door of my office. Doh! I’m not sure if it was the look on my face, the sudden flush of my cheeks or the stench of guilt in the room but he knew something was not right.

He glanced at my screen, catching a glimpse of the magnified fishnet thigh and lingeried torso of said pop queen. There was nothing I could do. No quickly switching to another screen or talking myself out of this one. All I could muster was, “It was Google… an autocompleter…Lady Gaga is a man.” And with that he shook his head and quickly dismissed himself from my office.

Thanks Google!

This small, yet embarrassing predicament got me thinking: How does Google come up with this crap? Are people really searching for links on Lady Gaga’s unmentionables? Where do autocompleters come from? Will I still have a job tomorrow? In order to remedy the situation, I decided to do some more "professional" research on the subject.

According to Google, autocomplete is an algorithm that offers searches that might be similar to the one you are typing.  The algorithm predicts and displays queries based on other users’ search activities. All of the predicted queries that are shown in the drop-down list have been typed previously by Google users.

This tells me that Google users have typed Lady Gaga is a man enough times into a search engine that it is now an autocomplete algorithm. Ya’ll are freaks!

I go further…

Wanting to know more about the situation I do a little keyword research. I want to see the numbers. How many times a day do people search the term Lady Gaga is a man? According to seobook.com, the term Lady Gaga is a man is searched for 5,457 times a day. 5,457 times! Lady Gaga herself is searched for a whopping 42,437 times a day in contrast to Barack Obama (you know, the President of the United States), only 9,307.

The moral of the story: Stay away from Google autocomplete suggestions until after work and…if you want to rise in search engine results, write a story about Lady Gaga.