Google's "explanations" are a complete joke. https://t.co/nluR7FtC1c — Paul Epps (@paulepps) August 7, 2024 Google’s “explanation” for this is a complete joke as is their “explanation” for why searching for “Donald Trump” brings up information about Kamala Harris. Software engineers have always called software errors “bugs,” because if you call something an error, it implies that someone is responsible for making the error, whereas if you call something a bug, it sounds like it’s nobody’s fault, really, just something that crawled in there of its own volition, like a cockroach in your kitchen. You could also use the word “bug” for something that was not an error at all. You did it on purpose but got caught out and need to disavow it. That’s what Google is doing here. This seems very important to me. It’s not good at all and here’s why: Google has become synonymous with online search.… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Search
Hey Google! Does Joe Biden Have Dementia?
Here’s a fun experiment you can try out yourself . . . Pull up a Google search bar and type “does joe biden have dementia.” Of course you know Google has an autocomplete feature to fill in common searches. Here’s what happened when I started to type “does joe biden have dementia”: According to Google, the top search starting with “does joe biden have” is “does joe biden have a dog”! Are people making decisions about presidential candidates based on whether or not they have a dog?! Here’s the result when I type in the whole search phrase: There’s no autocomplete at all! Apparently I’m the only person in the entire universe to enter the search phrase “does joe biden have dementia.” Now switch search engines. I switched to DuckDuckGo and started typing the same search phrase. Here’s the result: With DuckDuckGo, I only have to type three letters to… Read more →
How to Tell if a . . .
I typed that into Google and here’s what autocomplete came back with: Guys want to know how to tell if a girl likes them. Girls also want to know if someone likes them, but not as much as they want to know if that egg is bad. Read more →
Year in Search 2017
The annual Google search trends are available for 2017. A couple of surprises to me: The third most searched for person in the world (behind Matt Lauer and Meghan Markle) was Nadia Toffa, whom I’ve never heard of. The most searched for “How To” item was “How to make slime.” Read more →
What People Want to Pronounce
Twitter: 2010-12-15
RT @kausmickey: The revolution will not be search-engine optimized! # Read more →