googleFilter

December 10, 2004 7:07 AM

A large number of people really don't know the finer points of search. For those people, Google has a suggestion.
posted by Mick (45 comments total)

That's kinda neat. Who knew there were so many results for "lemurians"? I just hope they keep that separate from the regular Google search, because that would drive me nuts if I weren't actively interested in using it.
posted by headspace at 7:09 AM on December 10, 2004

i...

i am...

i am looking...

i am looking for a...

i am looking for a filipino...

i am looking for a filipino by felix bautista. 114 results. :)
posted by plasticpool at 8:32 AM on December 10, 2004

Of George Carlin's seven words, the only one that Google would suggest for me as I typed was "shit".

I do this in the name of research.
posted by bachelor#3 at 8:34 AM on December 10, 2004

Amazing. Can't hurt, and might help some poor souls who lack suffiicent quantities of Google-Fu.
posted by davidmsc at 8:35 AM on December 10, 2004

Coo! My friend's (exotic) name is one of the suggestions. Lotsa people be searching for him, heh.

Don't know how useful it is fu-wise, though. Isn't that more about narrowing down your terms based on what you get in the results?
posted by bonaldi at 8:36 AM on December 10, 2004

"Porn" didn't come up even once.

C'mon, fess up: who broke the internet?
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 8:50 AM on December 10, 2004

zvkvriv has has almost 1200 results. I didn't even know that was a word. I need to let the cats walk on my keyboard more often.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 8:54 AM on December 10, 2004

Coo! My friend's (exotic) name is one of the suggestions. Lotsa people be searching for him, heh.

I made the cut, too. I consider this to be an internet status symbol of the highest degree.
posted by rafter at 8:59 AM on December 10, 2004

"Tentacle rape", nada.

"Tentacle romance", they've got.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:17 AM on December 10, 2004

it seems to me like this must introduce a significantly higher traffic load than their usual setup, since each keystroke presumably triggers some form of communication with the remote server.

if everyone used this instead of the home page (or if it was incorporated into any of the widely-used toolbars), i would imagine their bandwidth needs would be an order of magnitude higher than they currently are.

sure is cool, though.
posted by dkg at 9:19 AM on December 10, 2004

Heh. I had to type "Jerry Kin" before my name showed up.
posted by kindall at 9:22 AM on December 10, 2004

I'm baffled that in the seemingly vague pre-search of "SL," the first suggestion is for "Slime Soccer."

Which I have never heard of...but I don't get out much.
posted by tpl1212 at 9:23 AM on December 10, 2004

I made the cut, too. I consider this to be an internet status symbol of the highest degree.

Oh, most certainly not, when dorks like me are on there.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 9:36 AM on December 10, 2004

The query "Brittany Spears," typed solely for the sake of research, bought this suggestion:

brittany spears nakid
posted by LarryC at 9:36 AM on December 10, 2004

My name made it too. Therefore, I approve of this new gadget.
posted by chicobangs at 9:37 AM on December 10, 2004

That's awesome, and just might replace my current google homepage in my browser.
posted by mathowie at 9:43 AM on December 10, 2004

Can someone give me an example of how this is useful? My first reaction when playing with it was "Wow, cool!" but then I couldn't figure out how it would actually improve my search results.
posted by gwint at 9:56 AM on December 10, 2004

Gwint: it's just faster. Now I won't have to remember how the hell xyz is spelt.

About the general usefulness of this: I think for people like me and many others here (multiple tabs open, ctrl+k in firefox to go to google search, use mouse gestures to close windwos because clicking on a button is irritating)... but for the kind who open a new browser session and then press www.google.com + enter + searchterm + enter + open result + back + open next result... it might just be just distracting.

PS. I've seen this before on weblog search functions, the 'innovation' here is the scale (and speed?) of the thing.
posted by Firas at 10:04 AM on December 10, 2004 [1 favorite]

I used this new brand of google-fu to find an article on something i have always worried about This.
posted by mervin_shnegwood at 10:11 AM on December 10, 2004

Thanks to that, I found this:
posted by konolia at 10:13 AM on December 10, 2004

I'm baffled that in the seemingly vague pre-search of "SL," the first suggestion is for "Slime Soccer."

"ra" = radio shack

"al"
1) altavista
2) al jazeera

"th"
1) thanksgiving
2) the incredibles

"dw"
1) dwp
2) dwell magazine
3) dwarfism

(Proving that anything can be made profound when you're hungover.)
posted by mudpuppie at 10:17 AM on December 10, 2004

reflection: That made my day. Who knew 2.9 million people loved me?
posted by chundo at 10:19 AM on December 10, 2004

Meh. It's kind of fun to play with, but the real challenge to doing a search is finding the right combination of words. The more challenging searches are not so linear. I guess it could be good for jogging your memory or giving you some new ideas. I'll have to play with it a little more.
posted by zorro astor at 10:25 AM on December 10, 2004

loose weight 4,160,000 results
loose weight fast 1,310,000 results
loose weight now 2,050,000 results
loose weight for free 2,230,000 results

That's a lot of loose weight.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 10:29 AM on December 10, 2004

Sweet, I'm a google suggestion. Though not till you get to "rusty f". Still, Matt doesn't show up until you've gotten to "matt hau", so I win.

Google has indeed invented an entirely new status symbol. New question: "So how many letters are you?"
posted by rusty at 10:49 AM on December 10, 2004

This little widget doesn't strike me as overly useful, but like dkg, what's more interesting to me is how it works. I can't imagine that it would be very snappy on a high latency connection. Anyone out there who measures their bandwidth in kbps who wants to comment?
posted by bicyclingfool at 10:52 AM on December 10, 2004

Can someone give me an example of how this is useful?

It's certainly useful in checking which spelling variant of a word or term is more popular, as you can start with the first few letters and get your answer with zero clicks, instead of three or however many.

Also, it's cool, so it's useful in increasing the coolness of the world. Right?
posted by soyjoy at 10:53 AM on December 10, 2004

It's definitely cool and interesting, but I'm with those who think it's not extremely useful or practical. I'm especially baffled by making it your home page. For me, my own previous search history autocompletion is far more useful.
posted by rafter at 11:04 AM on December 10, 2004

I'm a suggestion when you get to "captain te" (no love with the underscore for some reason). You only need to type out "satanos" to get "satanosphere", though.
posted by Captain_Tenille at 11:32 AM on December 10, 2004

I don't appear on it. And that's just the way I like it.
posted by euphorb at 11:42 AM on December 10, 2004

A large number of people really don't know the finer points of search. For those people, AskMe has a suggestion.
posted by chicobangs at 11:48 AM on December 10, 2004

slightly off topic, but successful search is less about knowing syntax arcanities or incorporating auto-complete and more about choosing a sensible search term. even with the seriously broken mefi brute force search, i find double posts, mostly on the first result, after people claim "golly, i searched!". mefi will almost never match a URL correctly, but it does produce good results on sensible one-keyword searches.
posted by quonsar at 12:20 PM on December 10, 2004

Dave Pell has listed all of the first suggestions for individual letters. Nothing too surprising, except p.
posted by mendel at 12:23 PM on December 10, 2004

Is this neat or did Google just invent a new revenue stream? My company wants to appear on that little pull down and are willing to pay for being in the top five when someone types something close to these products or these names.

Is this different than the side bar adverts, except right now Google states they are pure and the search results don't get dirty because of advertising dollars.

Interesting.
posted by fluffycreature at 1:20 PM on December 10, 2004

Secret Life of G---

Girls or Germs...no Gravy. I'm so secret, you see.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 2:51 PM on December 10, 2004

Obligatory self-link on the new penis-length measurement for the Internet I just invented: your Google select number.
posted by kindall at 4:44 PM on December 10, 2004

Re: Google select number

Metafilter would be a 5.1 — nothing until 'metaf', but then it's the first choice.
posted by djwudi at 8:35 PM on December 10, 2004

The result for 'george bush is a'
george bush is an idiot

subsequentially, 'john kerry is a'
john kerry is a douche bag

also, the result for every '(male name) is a' I've tried so far is
(male name) is gay.

good job, internet.
posted by henryultrajames at 9:27 PM on December 10, 2004

But henry... um, we -- we are all gay. You didn't get the memo?
posted by chicobangs at 9:41 PM on December 10, 2004

We are all Keynesians gay now.
posted by kindall at 9:44 PM on December 10, 2004

mendel, very interesting. I imagine a children's book: C is for CNN, H is for Hotmail, P is for Paris Hilton...
posted by rustcellar at 12:39 AM on December 11, 2004

Lesb provides "lesb" and "lesbiens", but no "lesbian" or "lesbians".

And "bugbre" only comes up with "bugbreastlovers", no "bugbread".

Of course, now I'm intensely curious what the hell the search results are for "bugbreastlovers".
posted by Bugbread at 7:30 AM on December 11, 2004 [1 favorite]

VanityFilter: I come up, at position five, on my first name. Granted, it's a pretty unusual first name.

Also: I'm famis! Wheeeeeee!
posted by myeviltwin at 8:31 AM on December 11, 2004

Richard Anderson i... iowa? That does not even make sense. I want to be gay too!
posted by Dick Paris at 9:13 AM on December 11, 2004

A more general status marker would be the number of characters to isolate a search string for which you are the first hit. For me, not so easy, since I share a name with the drummer for a fairly well-known band.
posted by rustcellar at 2:56 PM on December 11, 2004