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Putting "Search" into Google yields a surprising result

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Re: Putting "Search" into Google yields a surprising result

#101

Post by Vivtek »

Eliezer wrote: post #78
js2 wrote: post #29

A few years back, Sergey and Larry were on NPR's Fresh Air. At one point in the interview, Terry Gross says "I tried searching for 'Google' by putting 'Google' into the search box and clicking I'm Feeling Lucky, but it didn't seem to do anything." Larry tries to explain what happened, but it seemed to go over Terry's head. At one point during the explanation I think Sergey mentioned recursion, and Terry asks "Recur-w…

I can't believe it, I type "Idempotence" in and hit Lucky and it just takes me to the Wikipedia entry on Idempotence! Even worse, "idempotence idempotence idempotence" doesn't produce exactly the same result in Google as "idempotence".

Because the ghost named Idempotence appears?

Re: Putting "Search" into Google yields a surprising result

#102

Post by Retric »

joe_the_user wrote: post #99
uxp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another non-cited story I've heard is an A/B test, or similar, was once done where they removed the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button from the front page, and an overwhelming number of users said they did not like the solitary search button. Having both gave the users a sense of choice, even though (as the story goes), "I'm feeling lucky" is used by only a small fraction of a percent of users.

And humorously enough, the present "I'm feeling lucky" button literally cannot be pressed ... except on the initial, empty search box ... under which circumstances it leads you to ... a list old Google Doodles... Feelin' Lucky now? Guy...

Umm, I just used it and it worked fine.

List > (i am feeling lucky) = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_%28programming_language%29

PS: Not everyone enables scripts.

Re: Putting "Search" into Google yields a surprising result

#103

Post by kennymeyers »

Vivtek wrote: post #101
Eliezer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe it, I type "Idempotence" in and hit Lucky and it just takes me to the Wikipedia entry on Idempotence! Even worse, "idempotence idempotence idempotence" doesn't produce exactly the same result in Google as "idempotence".

Because the ghost named Idempotence appears?

I like this, but only because I like Reddit so much.

Re: Putting "Search" into Google yields a surprising result

#106

Post by vrode »

js2 wrote: post #29

A few years back, Sergey and Larry were on NPR's Fresh Air. At one point in the interview, Terry Gross says "I tried searching for 'Google' by putting 'Google' into the search box and clicking I'm Feeling Lucky, but it didn't seem to do anything." Larry tries to explain what happened, but it seemed to go over Terry's head. At one point during the explanation I think Sergey mentioned recursion, and Terry asks "Recur-w…

The more important questions is whether Google has developed self-awareness.

Re: Putting "Search" into Google yields a surprising result

#107

Post by crocowhile »

officemonkey wrote: post #33
Vivtek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there was a brief window in the mid-90's when Dogpile was definitely in the top 2. It replaced Metacrawler as my main search for a few months, as I recall.

I used Altavista right up until I first heard of Google. Before Altavista I used Webcrawler ( http://thinkpink.com/bp/WebCrawler/History.html ).

My brother in law is quite a computer illiterate and he DOES use altavista as only search engine. God knows why.

He is 29 and does not even have an email address.

Re: Putting "Search" into Google yields a surprising result

#108

Post by chrischen »

FreeWorld wrote: post #95
dholowiski wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So honestly, shouldn't google show up as the top result for search? Does the fact that it doesn't prove that Google does, occasionally manually 'fudge' search results?

Well, why would google put itself as the top search result, when you are already on google search. And also, recently, there was some complaint (don't remember exactly who filed the complaint) about the anti-competitive movement of google when it comes to always showing google maps results when searching for locations. Anyhow, just my view of this.

Why would Dogpile come up as #1?

Re: Putting "Search" into Google yields a surprising result

#109

Post by pushingbits »

ja2ke wrote: post #69
js2 wrote: post #29

A few years back, Sergey and Larry were on NPR's Fresh Air. At one point in the interview, Terry Gross says "I tried searching for 'Google' by putting 'Google' into the search box and clicking I'm Feeling Lucky, but it didn't seem to do anything." Larry tries to explain what happened, but it seemed to go over Terry's head. At one point during the explanation I think Sergey mentioned recursion, and Terry asks "Recur-w…

Side note: With results-as-you-type now being the default even from the Google front page, isn't "I'm feeling lucky" a totally vestigial button at this point?

Wrote a blog post a couple weeks ago about turning it into a keyword quick search.

http://www.pushingbits.net/posts/google-im-feeling-lucky-add...

Very useful.

Re: Putting "Search" into Google yields a surprising result

#110

Post by ch0wn »

uvTwitch wrote: post #13

This makes sense to me. If you're using google to find 'search', you're probably not searching for google.

Interestingly, I've seen multiple non-tech persons with Bing as their default homepage (most of them having IE as browser) actually searching for "google" with Bing to search for what they wanted in the first place. I guess it's likely that people do it the other way around.
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