Google Suggest is just what is sounds like. It suggests alternative queries for you in real time as you type your searches into Google. Those suggestions are primarily based on the queries that other Google users have searched for…

As you can see in the image above, there’s been a lot of interest in Bigfoot recently (due to claims of Bigfoot being recently captured). That interest has translated into large numbers of searches for queries like searching for bigfoot, causing that query to show up on Google Suggest when you type search.

Mid-tail searches of 3-4 words which are currently getting a lot of traffic are likely to receive even more traffic once this new feature goes live, as users are channeled towards the queries Google suggests for them. Longer-tail searches of 5 words or more that don’t get much traffic to begin with are likely to get even less as many users opt to use the shorter phrases Google displays.

As for your own site, you should be able to get good traffic out of this new feature if you can generate enough publicity and reach that tipping point where your keywords are shown in this suggestion box.

For example, TravelRepublic.co.uk could see significantly increased traffic since, even though they don’t appear on the first page of search results for the query travel. That’s because they do appear in the list of search suggestions that Google provides.

That’s most likely caused by TravelRepublic.co.uk having a good offline marketing campaign that drives a large number of searches for their brand. Google is aware of these searches, and thus includes travel republic in their list of Google Suggestions for the very high traffic keyword travel.

This could mean that your offline branding and advertising efforts could have a very real impact on your search engine traffic, particularly if you brand around a phrase that starts with a keyword that already gets very high search engine traffic.

More from the official Google Blog.