The Inquisitr » google trends

Google jokes: Find Chuck Norris

Kim LaCapria — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:03:29 +0000

Unlike the “white people stole my car” Google joke, this one works.

If you go to Google and type “find Chuck Norris” into the search box, then hit “I’m feeling lucky,” hilarity ensues. If you’re not tired of the Chuck Norris meme. “I’m feeling lucky” automatically brings you to the first page of results- in this case, a page made to look like a failed search on Google. After giving you the option to search the web or “Chuck’s beard,” this text is displayed:

Google won’t search for Chuck Norris because it knows you don’t find Chuck Norris, he finds you.

No standard web pages containing all your search terms were found.

Your search - Chuck Norris – did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

Run, before he finds you

Try a different person

Google bombs and search result jokes are a long standing internet tradition. For a few days after the Iraq War began in 2003, googling for “weapons of mass destruction” returned a fake 404 error page that was pretty clever. And famously, for a time, googling “miserable failure” and clicking “I’m feeling lucky” sent you to George W. Bush’s Wikipedia page.

Google searches indicate economy is recovering. Slowly.

Kim LaCapria — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:57:06 +0000

Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, has noticed some significant, promising changes trending since March.

Unemployment searches are down, real estate searches are up, and temporary employment (which often is a pre-indicator for a recovery in the permanent kind) is improving, for starters. Varian, who joined Google seven years ago to help design their now $21 billion yearly ad business, was in Washington last week to entice the government to use Google to “better draw current snapshots of consumer sentiment, corporate health and social interests.” Which would be incredibly useful if they’re not doing it already- people are notoriously poor at providing accurate information about themselves, whether through intentional means (lying), misunderstanding questions, or optimism, for example. But Google doesn’t lie. Statistical data drawn from user search trends and habits are much less likely to reflect prejudice or misinformation provided by those being profiled based on that criteria.

Varian points to the “cash for clunkers” short-sightedness that has drawn much critique. Had the government used data from Google metrics to gauge interest in the program, he says, perhaps they may have known the money would run out as quickly as it did. While Varian’s conclusions may not differ all that much from those being drawn by non-Googling economists, the mere fact that the statistical data mined from Google is so rich and nuanced is reason alone that the search engine’s data is valuable to show us what is and possibly, what is to be.

In perhaps the most reassuring prediction I’ve seen so far, Varian believes recovery is coming. He Googled it.

With more stability in the economy, Varian said more help for private companies, such as tax incentives, could help spur an earnest recovery.

“On the other hand, I would hesitate to say we need any more major initiatives at this point,” he said. “The die is cast and things seem to be moving in the right direction. Let’s stay the course.”

[Source: The Washington Post]

Google celebrates the “Unexplained Phenomenon,” but why?

Kim LaCapria — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 17:53:51 +0000

For the past day, Google’s main logo has been replaced with one featuring a flying saucer.

Clicking on the image pulls up a search for “unexplained phenomenon,” but there’s no discernable reason why Google is marking today and yesterday. The UK’s telegraph did a short piece on the trend, but I think their speculation about marking the UK release of District 9 is off- not only is Google more apt to mark an American release, but I’ve never known them to mark the release of any movie with a logo change.

One likely reason is in commemoration of the 44th anniversary of UFO sightings in Exeter, NH (full story after the jump):

An extremely well-documented and investigated UFO case of close encounters occurred in Exeter, New Hampshire in 1965. This case would make a huge impact on Ufology, and mainstream media as well. The Exeter events would be chronicled in an excellent book by investigative writer John G. Fuller, titled, “Incident at Exeter.” Look magazine also ran a two-part series on the events, bringing the case to the minds of millions of people.

A Light Becomes an Object:The events at Exeter began as eighteen-year-old Norman Muscarello was hitching for a ride on the cold night of September 3, 1965. He was on Route 150 heading for the small New England town of Exeter, population 7,000, at 2:00 AM. As he walked along, he suddenly noticed an unusual light glowing in the dark skies. The light soon became an object, and headed straight toward the hitchhiker.

However, the logo change will have to remain as unexplained phenomena for the time being. In the interim, you can read about the Top Ten Unexplained Phenomena here.

Edit: An Associated Content blogger points out an encrypted Google tweet. The plot thickens!

Even more curious is the unexplained phenomenon of a Twitter post by Google. An encrypted message that read “1.12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20.15 21.19″ was sent out to followers of Google on Twitter. Decoded, the unexplained phenomenon message reads “all your o are belong to us”. Although the message is far from grammatically correct, it fits with the UFO that is beaming up one of the Google ”O”s in today’s Google images.

Real or fake? “White people stole my car” is big on Google

Kim LaCapria — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:37:30 +0000

For the past week, the phrase “white people stole my car” has been Googled like crazy.

Perplexingly, though, there were few results yielded by this popular search and most links lead to some fairly nasty malware. Finally, the above screenshot surfaced, which seems to at least solve the mystery of why the phrase was so popular on Google. As the screenshot above implies, Googling the term “white people stole my car” results in the search engine asking if black people stole my car. Well that’s… really not cool, Google!

But is it real or fake? As of now, Google does not correct the phrase in a racially insensitive way. And while it does appear that at one time Google did, it’s entirely possible and plausible that someone misspelled “black people stole my car,” got the correction shown, and altered the search text as a prank.

I tried to re-fake a screenshot, but it seems that Google is not correcting any searches to say “black people stole my car” anymore. Bummer.

[Source: Snopes message boards]

Google Unveils New Website Traffic Tool

JR — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:41:13 +0000

You can now track web site stats with Google Trends, thanks to a new toolset called — fittingly enough — Google Trends for Websites.

The utility lets you chart out traffic for any site and even break down visits by geographic region. You can also compare multiple sites on one line graph. Perhaps one of the handiest features for developers, though, is the ability to see additional sites visited and queries searched by people who viewed the page in question.

For example, if you do a data analysis of The Inquisitr, you’ll see that people who come here also go to exactcenteroftheinternet.com — curious — as well as to flickabooger.com. Huh…okay.

In a slightly more understandable result, you can see that people accessing this site also searched for “twitter.”

An interesting new tool from Google, no doubt. Now, though, time to go see what this flickabooger.com is all about…