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I've noticed that the auto-suggest behavior in Google Search and Google Maps is different.

If you search in Google Search and enter "exa", you'll get suggestions like "exa mple". If you do the same in Google Maps, you'll get "exa mple". So the part that is bold is exactly the opposite.

Is there an explanation for this behaviour? I know that the odds aren't very high that a Google employee will answer my question, but I'm rather looking for reasons why a respective highlighting behaviour makes sense for the one app, but not so much in the other.

Please note that "example" doesn't work in Google Maps and you need to enter a proper location to observe the behaviour.

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closed as primarily opinion-based by Code Maverick, Evil Closet Monkey, Charles Wesley, Joshua Barron, Erics Apr 1 '14 at 8:54

Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.

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    Sometimes large companies build the tools with separate teams that don't collaborate. It could be an error on their part with this inconsistency. It's going to be speculation unless you hear an answer directly from Google. – Pdxd Mar 31 '14 at 18:10
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From what I can deduce, Google is emphasizing and using bold text to draw attention to areas of interest specific to the type of search in the auto suggestions. Different information will cause a need for different emphasizing basically.

Example 1: The general search auto complete / suggest produces bold text of multiple things: misspelled words, common endings to your search query and so on. So its going to emphasize differently depending on whats entered.

Example 2: In maps, you are seeking a location: the City, State and Country will be less important than the address number and street, so the first series of words are bold producing more attraction to the eye and less attraction to areas of reduced interest.

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