I wrote a few months ago about Google's experimentation with predictive search. Today on a (work-related!) search for football forums, I noticed an interesting development in predictive search - predictive search history.

I had previously done a search for 'football forums' and after finding a couple of relevant sites, I decided to widen my search to ' sports forums'. While the previous version of predictive search would add related terms, e.g. suggesting 'gin & tonic' during a search for 'gin', this search went a stage further by suggesting 'football forums' (see screenshot below).

Given the tremendous number of sports available, suggesting 'football forums' is too detailed a suggestion without some degree of personalisation. It seems highly likely that Google had taken into consideration my previous searches and suggested a niche query based on my searching history.

I would even suggest that as a Google Desktop user, it may even have taken into consideration my football obsession and offered suggestions based on my interests. Now that would be an interesting development.

I'd be interested to hear your explanations.