In accordance with an embodiment, described herein is a system and method for determining and displaying a list of suggested search items for a search field based on prior user interaction. A suggestion curator provided at a client device can display a plurality of suggested search items to a user who is performing a search. The system can display the plurality of suggested search items in an order that is based on a rating associated with each item. The rating can be assigned to each search item upon its selection by the user, and adjusted in response to subsequent search item selections by the user. The system can be configured to adjust each rating by different amounts based on metadata describing how recently the search item was last selected by the user. The system can then re-order the plurality of suggested search items in accordance with the adjusted ratings.