Rush did this today, but probably every host does it if you listen long enough.
“X” is more/less popular than “Y” because the Google Search results say the count for X is more/less than Count for Y
Stu of Glenn Beck is the only on-air person that really seems to understand how Google Search works.
Play along…. Today Rush was making the case about Michele Bachmann not being well known – comparing her to Obama Head Start….
Before you play along, sign out from Google Mail or other ways you might be signed into Google.
Following the wrong way to search Google, search for:
Michele Bachmann – 295,000,000 results
Obama Head Start – 8,300,000 results
Therefore Michele Bachmann is much more important.
The problem is that by default when you use more than one word, the search is Michele AND Bachmann – but anywhere on the page – the words don’t have to be next to each other. While things about Michele Bachmann will SORT relevant things first, pages with the words widely separated will still count (like a page about Bachmann pretzels) [The pretzel is speeled with only one n]
You need to put the two words in quotes:
“Michele Bachmann” – 18,000,000
Both words in her name can be speeled wrongly – so if you wanted a slightly more loose search, you can do
“(Michele OR Michelle) (Bachmann OR Bachman OR Backman OR Backmann)”
62,000,000
the OR being upper case matters… if you type “or” instead of “OR” you were asking for the actual word “or”.
I’m really vague on the point Rush was trying to prove.
“head start” OR “headstart” returns 75,300,000
Therefore Michele Bachmann is less written about than the Head Start program… oh, but we didn’t mention “Program”, just something having a head start
“head start” OR “headstart” program returns 31,400,000
Now if you add in that not only does it have to be the Head Start Program, but also mention Obama….
Obama (“head start” OR “headstart”) program
we get 3,000,000 results
Searching Google is one of the strongest skills I have among my tools – it’s how I built FindAnISP and StreamingRadioGuide – finding that obscure web page that was written completely wrong to be seen in Google, or finding clever ways to find things coming indirectly.
Even in the best case, you’re only counting the number of things on the internet that Google indexes, and only in the languages you told Google to use. Your geographic location may also affect the results.
Unfortunately, Google is now so convoluted that it boggles the mind… search results are ‘personalized’ and affected by beacons, IP, location, cookies, and other ‘profiling’.
Two people can search on “BP Oil”: one will get stock info, the other ‘oil spill’ news.
As a current example, I just did a search for: “cotton bowl live stream”
The top result is from: ‘occupywallst.org’ with links to stream the game. Huh?
Forgive me, but I find it disturbing and ironic that OWS is the first result presented by Google. Why would OWS promote the corporate sports & broadcasting empire?
Something stinks over at Google, and I fear for the future of the internet.
You’re not going to like my answer, but it’s that kind of day.
That search is a very vague topic – remember the default is to AND all of the words, and if Google doesn’t have a big data reference to pull from, it’s going to look mostly at those 4 words being close together (the fact that it bolds words in the URL and the text is very signficant in understanding why Google chose that as the “best result”).
That result is very relevant to the question you asked google. It describes how to see the Cotton Bowl on a Live stream. It didn’t care about the domain. Google also puts a high premium on pages that change frequently and have lots of fresh content. It’s also highly likely that the people on that web site know a lot about how Google works.
This is a mirror of an old semi-scam in the SEO business – it goes something like this. Pay me $1000 and I’ll guarantee your company will be in the first page of results. The SEO firm then picks a combination of words that nobody ever searches for…. let’s say you run a chocolate store, so the web page is optimized for “cherry filled chocolate bon-bons from Swizterland”, and like magic – in a day or two, a search for “Cherry Filled Chocolate bon bons from Switzerland” returns you as the #1 result (this page would be #1 in a day except that I don’t allow Google to index it)… The problem is that zero people a year do a search on exactly “cherry filled chocolate bon bons from swizterland”
People constantly fall into this trap – someone will find a search result for something nobody would search on, then plaster it on Free Republic as proof of Google Bias ™.
Try this search:
lgbt parents engage in homosexuality
The #2 result is the Family Research Council, the group founded by Dr James Dobson. Is that Google Bias directing gay people to a Conservative web site?