About a year ago I came up with a cunning plan for a game for the two Pawns, and part of that plan was creating a secret web page and making a link to it from a different, google-indexed web page, so that when the Pawns googled a certain Clue phrase they would have found the next Clue. That project disappeared beneath all my other half-finished projects, but I was reminded of it, and the art of google-spiking, a couple of days ago.
Last week I reviewed Jenny ‘s book and she asked me what I meant by the title of the review (“I’m a professional cynic but my heart’s not in it”). I said it was a line from a Blur song, but I couldn’t remember which one, so I googled it [1]. I was gratified to find that the second hit was my blog entry at the Lab Rats. Jenny, however, reported that when she googled exactly the same phrase, it was the ninth hit. Me being me I started trying different versions of Google (.com, .com.au, .co.uk …) to see if there was a pattern, but consistently got second place. Jenny suggested that Google knew I was in Australia and was therefore returning Antipodean-centered results, which is an interesting hypothesis: at the time I thought it might be fun to get some more people to try it, and see what we could find, but real life intervened.
This morning I tried again, and found that the Lab Rats is sixth, but second place is taken by my Friendfeed notification. How bizarre. The link to the review on Amazon.com is on the second page of the Google results.
So, in the best traditions of quantum mechanics — that is, in the observing of something we actually change it (and ourselves) — your task, my willing minions, is to google “I’m a professional cynic but my heart’s not in it” and report back what you find; and click through to this blog entry once it’s there to make me number one.
1 Country House
Second page, first link, from google.ca.
Actually, just talking with someone else about this, we need more data: are you logged in or not, and what happens if you do/don’t use quotes, and clicking on the TinyURL vs entering it into google directly.
Oh, and a further confounding variable… using the Google home page versus the browser’s inbuilt search function?
Gee, this science lark is hard.
11th hit (first one on 2nd page) – logged in, copy/pasted phrase but on Google’s suggestion changed the apostrophe to the straight thing (it copies the comma-like thing). Friendfeed is two and (indented) three, and Twitter is six.
oooh. That’s interesting. But I don’t have a curly thing here, so maybe it’s a character set issue?
(Oh, and google “burwood medicare”. Snerk)
Sure it’s not a character issue?
I didn’t get any hits, but Eva’s Google suggestion about the apostrophes change it. So, pop pickers, your Friendfeed version is no. 2 in Finland, and LabRat is down at no. 4. Your twitter version is a new entry at 7. The Amazon review is sliding away at 8 on the second page.
And there’s more LabRat versions on the third page: one at 4, and the FeedShow RSS reader at the bottom.
Well, we’re UTF-8 all the way here. What are you guys using?
ehh…. you don’t even come up at all. (logged in, google with ” “, 3 pages with hits from Blur. The generator asks “did you mean ” … heart’ is …”).
logged out, without ” ” more hits but nothing with you in it….. [note; I am in Sweden doing this 🙂 ]
very strange yet interesting
OK, so Sweden is an outlier.
But we knew that, didn’t we Eva?
pah.
What I like about you, Åsa, is your eloquence.
hey, I am trying not to always write smaller novels as answers… 😉 but seriously, the google thing annoyed me a bit. Why didn’t I get the lablit thing?!!?
In google.co.uk, if you put the phrase in with the double blips, you don’t come up at all. Without the double blips, you’re currently in No 5 slot.
Hurrah.
_In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 23 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included._
Not in the top 23 on google.ca. Changing the curly apostrophe to a straight one – not in the top 28. Changing to “straight” quotation marks – same result, not in the top 28.
Dropping the quotation marks (as Brian did) – LabRats is sixth (or fifth; #2 was one of those indented ‘sub-pages’ of #1).
I believe I may have spent too much time on this.
I would assume that the variance you’re seeing is due to Google’s “personalized search” function:
http://www.google.com/psearch
“Get the search results most relevant to you.
Web History helps deliver more personalized search results based on the things you’ve searched for on Google and the sites you’ve visited. You might not notice a big impact on your search results early on, but they should steadily improve over time the more you use Web History. ”
So we should clear our search histories and try again?
David said what I was about to say – part of Google’s algorithm is to show you returns based on site’s you’ve visited often. I always get my own blog coming back at me in response to numerous and varied Google searches – but I expect it is only I who sees it there ;-).
site’s – what is THAT? I never typed that apostrophe. Potatoe’s, anyone? Tomatoe’s?
They’ll get you when your not looking.
I think the differences might be due to the apostrophes. NN seems to use a slanted apostrophe, which Google doesn’t like. Replace them with a straight apostrophe, and you’ll get better hits. At least that’s what worked for me.
Oh dear, The Beast has just been captured by a cushion. I might have to clip his claws soon.
part of Google’s algorithm is to show you returns based on site’s you’ve visited often
….but that makes it even more strange for me to not get the Lablit hit….. * sniffles * I mean, I do hang out there….. but maybe I do not google it that much but still…..
I guess I will see if there is a difference with the straight and curly ” ”
ok, with “straight” ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ in both places the Labrat is fourth. Twitter comes as sixth….
not an outlier anymore 🙂
Welcome home, Åsa.
_“Get the search results most relevant to you.
Web History helps deliver more personalized search results based on the things you’ve searched for on Google and the sites you’ve visited._
So Richard, this proves you’re the only one who reads your blog!
HAHAH!
Richard – The Blur lyrics was number 8 on my search. I just did a copy and used the “Search Live Search” function in Google chrome. The Lab Rats reference was on page 2 number 6. This was conducted in the San Francisco area.
You should have emailed me, Richard. My own search algorithm would have brought up the following results:
1) Country House, by Blur
2) Not one of their better songs
3) But quite catchy. He lives in a house, a very big house, in the country
4) Was that their second album? It came out when I was at Uni, anyway
5) Watching afternoon repeats, and the food he eats, in the country! That part was quite good
6) Who’s Richard Grant, anyway? Is he a blogger, or some bloke I knew at school?
7) I wonder if he knows his claret from his beaujolais
8) What’s Friend Feed?
See? Way more useful than Google.
You’re just going round and round. Give my love to the dirty pigeons.
Ah, but even that way, you eventually come to the end. That’s a universal. And then you have no distance left to run, and may as well go home for coffee and TV.
Please don’t try to out-Blur me, it will not go well for you 😉
p.s. please keep your hands off of Google. There will be no leveraging of my kitty, for any ends, inimical or no.
Google enjoying some scheduled downtime
You’re number 1 at Google NZ. I’m logged out of google but then again I am coming from a Usyd location…
Hey! World famous in New Zealand!
Cath thinks she’s so high, but is really middle of the road. We should be movin’ on.
Down to Greece?
Only if it’s someone you really love.
Oh c’mon, there’s more to life than stereotypes, you know. Don’t be such a charmless man.
Woohoo. It’s not easy, but nothing is. You’re so great, though the words are wrong.
It’s not my problem
Can I use Gorillaz songs?
You’re on your own if you do. It’s over, I knew it would end this way.
You know, I thought this topic had veered completely off-topic – but then I realized it hasn’t, not at all.
_Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Oh, yeah_
Yay! Back at number 2 this morning.