"The keyboard on my mobile phone is as much use as a ….." (fill in the blank with your chosen simile).

Whatever your answer to the above, it isn’t very likely to be complimentary.

But now, Google is attempting to short-circuit the process by refining its Search Suggestions for mobile devices.

Currently only available for iPhones or those running on Google’s own Android mobile comms platform, the facility works in a similar fashion to predictive text (so if that annoys the heck out of you, steer clear…) in creating suggesting search terms based on the first handful of characters you input.

Google’s blog announced the US-only rollout of the service with the claim that it “can meaningfully reduce the time and effort it takes to submit a search”. Of course the big question users will want answering is whether that search will be the one they were intending…

Google is intending to maximise the relevance of the results by offering suggestions based on the phone’s current or last location, as in the samples below, from Search Engine Watch:

By doing this, Google claims it can offer even better, more useful suggestions than ever before.

Interestingly, few early commentators were making the link between this improvement and the arrival of Google’s Nexus One smartphone…