Re: Amazing

On 2/7/07, jimw wagner <jpw@sasktel.net> wrote:
>
> Dave Hall wrote:
>
> On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 11:22:55AM -0600, Scott Walde wrote:
>
> I have already been amazed with the google search box in FF2.0 and it's
> suggestions. I assumed they were using a list of most frequently
> searched terms. But, now I'm wondering if their algorithm is way more
> involved than that.
>
> A couple minutes ago, while John Gormley was introducing an upcoming
> guest, a professor known as Dr. Popsicle (for his research into the
> effects of cold on people), I typed "dr " into the search box, and it
> suggested 'dr popsicle'. You _can't_ tell me that 'dr popsicle' is the
> most common search term starting with 'dr '.
>
> Google must be actively updating the suggestions in realtime. Is it
> possible they're also making suggestions based on region?
>
> I never question the engineers at google. They prove time and time again
> they are way more clever than me. I don't doubt they can tie searches to a
> region. They already do that for adsense, I use adwords and target at
> Saskatchewan. I can't say for sure it's completely accurate but the
> click throughs I get are all from Saskatchewan. There's not reason they
> couldn't tie the live search into that same mechanism.
>
> It is surprising that real-time updates would be happening in searches,
> adwords keywords (which don't change in real-time) take a few minutes to
> become active, I assume they are processed in batch.
>
> I'm not sure if this is proof of anything, but my daughter tells of not
> being able to find a 'bunny-hug' in Vancouver, until she found a shop-clerk
> from Saskatchewan who knew what she meant.
>
> So just this minute, I put "bunny-hug" into Google, and among the first
> hits were from Wiktionary, which included in the definition, "a hooded
> sweater (Saskatchewan)."
>
> JimW
>

Jim- I had the same problem when I moved here, only in reverse! We call
Bunny-hugs "hoodies" in BC. I had to google it as well. I have to admit, I
use google for everything now, even when I'm stuck on writing up a lab
report. yay for google scholar!
Received on Thu Feb 8 07:49:03 2007