Today is election day, and Google knows that. So when you enter the search “where do I vote” (or anything similar), you get this:

And if you then enter your home address you get a map of your polling location. This is brilliant. When you can correctly guess what your users are looking for, you have the chance to delight them. A few things to keep in mind when guessing what your users want:

• Give them what they want, not what you want them to want
• Guessing works best when you know most of your users are in a certain frame of mind (e.g. voting on election day, preparing taxes in April)
• Guessing can also work well if you deliver personalized experiences to your users (Amazon does a great job of this)
• Since guesses can be wrong, don’t lock your users into your guess. Google still returns standard results in the example above, letting users easily ignore their guess.

So while you have to be careful, if you find an opportunity to make a good guess about what your users want, surprise them with excellent service.