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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

#121

Post by officemonkey »

crocowhile wrote: post #107
officemonkey wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He is probably still using the first website he ever used to search the internet.

It's my experience that people who are not interested in the internet and computers learn just enough to get along and have no curiosity about new sites or techniques.

It's actually a rather smart strategy: Learn just enough to be functional. Be resistant to new information.

I'm like that in the kitchen. :-D

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

#123

Post by ansgri »

solipsist wrote: post #82
rkalla wrote: post #30

Incase the result gets changed, here is the search result page (Bing is #1) http://i.imgscalr.com/kmPbJfLoV.png

Not that you may care, but posting photos of Google search result pages is now a dangerous thing and comes with a bunch of privacy concerns. Search result pages are personalized based on your previous searches and location. Simply from the image we can tell where you live (even if it didn't say so explicitly in the left tool bar).

And even tells that you're on Windows (characteristic ClearType).

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

#125

Post by scythe »

dholowiski wrote: post #94
nostrademons wrote: post #18

This is ancient, it's been like this since before I joined Google, which was before Bing came out. I think back then Dogpile was #1 (??), then Yahoo, then MSN Live. Occasionally it comes up and people get a good chuckle out of it.

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?

Maybe not. Google is so generic that there might not be as many links to Google -- y'know, 'cuz why do you need to link to Google -- as to several of these other engines. It's not totally impossible that some other engines would have a higher ranking organically.

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

#128

Post by eftpotrm »

colanderman wrote: post #62
eftpotrm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember once seeing a list of top X popular searches which included the term 'www.hotmail.com'. While I've no doubt it'd work, the level of understanding necessary to even attempt it is somewhat scary.

Um, I consider myself a native of computer-land and do this all the time . People accidentally type stuff in the wrong place. That doesn't mean they're cretins.

OK, perhaps I misworded it, but... it wasn't that it was happening but that it was happening regularly enough to get into the top 10 queries - that strongly implies that it's deliberate.

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

#129

Post by mukyu »

antimora wrote: post #20
mukyu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo uses Bing.

But Google comes before Bing in the search results.

The point was that since Yahoo uses Bing for its search you should not expect different results from Bing (that is to say, there is not point searching 'search' on Yahoo after you did it on Bing).

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

#130

Post by ja2ke »

Sharlin wrote: post #118
ja2ke wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Isn't the Search button useless as well? :D I suppose the only reason either is there is familiarity...

Haha true. I didn't think of it that way because my mind saw the homepage button and the search as you type button as "the same button" but yeah you're right. At this point (assuming you didn't disable scripts) the Google homepage needs nothing beyond an empty text field. No buttons, nothing. Weird.
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