Putting "Search" into Google yields a surprising result • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by estel » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 11:26 PM UTC

anedisi wrote: post #35

rkalla wrote: post #30

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

and if you search for www yahoo is first. http://i.imgur.com/mhDzY.jpg

That looks like a personalised result, especially with the google.ca underneath.

My UK Chrome incognito result has BBC, Wikipedia (World Wide Web), Wikipedia, Facebook and... uhh... Radisson Blu hotels.

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

#42

Post by Aqwis » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 11:27 PM UTC

Google Search doesn't appear at all if I do the search on Google.no. Yahoo comes first, followed by Bing and search.com. Twitter, AOL and 4shared (a file sharing site) are all on the list, and so is "Google Insights for Search".

I wonder if this reflects the relative popularity of the alternative search engines in different countries. Google's search ranking algorithms hold many mysteries.

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

#43

Post by MikeCapone » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 11:27 PM UTC

sixtofour wrote: post #38

uvTwitch wrote: post #13

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

Unless you don't know what search is, and you don't know you're using search.

In which case, Bing is probably where you belong, with all the people making typos in the URL bar of IE.

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

#44

Post by suyash » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 11:37 PM UTC

if you type "search engine" google doen't even show up on the 1st page atleast.

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

#45

Post by eftpotrm » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 11:39 PM UTC

MattBearman wrote: post #17

farnsworth wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't seen some of my friends try to use a computer.

It's only worse when they use Chrome's omninbar to Google 'Google', then Google 'Google' on Google to get to Google

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.

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

#46

Post by ars » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 11:39 PM UTC

Leynos wrote: post #32

hackermom wrote: post #25

Where's Altavista? :)

It kind of scares me that altavista.com still exists. It scares me even more that hotbot.com still exists.

altavista just redirects to yahoo when you search.

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

#47

Post by mmphosis » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 11:39 PM UTC

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=search

http://gigablast.com/search?q=search

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

#48

Post by anirudh » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 11:49 PM UTC

I wonder why they even have the "I am lucky" or even the Google Search button as tyrping even a letter takes me to the results page.

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

#49

Post by coderholic » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 11:51 PM UTC

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 ).

Ahh you're bringing back memories. I was av.com (altavista) before google, and yahoo.com before that. It's easy to forget how much search engines sucked before google.

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

#50

Post by wslh » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 11:57 PM UTC

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…

Instead of recursion a jump/goto can explain it better. You don't have a return on the Google page. The back button in the browser is a return but is an additional browser feature.