Comments on: What's the trick?

Question: What's the trick?

bobduckles — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:37:26 -0800

How do 'they' do this? Google the word "failure" and click "I'm feeling lucky.

By: Bezbozhnik

Bezbozhnik — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:40:35 -0800

It's a Google bomb.

By: bobduckles

bobduckles — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:42:47 -0800

How does it work?

By: dobbs

dobbs — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:48:07 -0800

If you read the link, it will tell you.

By: AmbroseChapel

AmbroseChapel — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:49:25 -0800

The weirdest thing about Google bombing is that Google ever included an "I'm feeling lucky" button in the first place. And possibly the second weirdest thing is that they called it "I'm feeling lucky".

Some people don't seem to understand that button at all.

It just means "go directly to the top result", (why isn't it called something like that?) so you could just search normally and see Bush come up as the top result, but somehow it doesn't have the same impact.

The weird thing about that button is that it means Google loses its prime real estate for showing you ads. Imagine someone proposing that at Yahoo for instance -- "I think we should let users skip the page where we show them the ads and go straight to the thing they're looking for". They'd be laughed at, at best.

By: AmbroseChapel

AmbroseChapel — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:50:51 -0800

How does it work?

Short answer? It's the top result for that search term.

Is that an accident? No. People worked on their websites specifically so that it would become the top result.

By: danb

danb — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 22:28:23 -0800

I've wondered that too, AmbroseChapel. My explanation is that it's a vestige of Google's less corporate days, and taking the button away now would hurt their "don't be evil" culture and public image.

By: the_bone

the_bone — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 22:35:28 -0800

The word from Google

By: rudyfink

rudyfink — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 22:44:18 -0800

I think they found that there was a higher satisfaction with the "I'm feeling lucky" button on the page. The overwhelming majority of people do not use it, but apparently, people have a more plesant experience because it's there.

By: fshgrl

fshgrl — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 22:52:42 -0800

It's been Bush for months and months.

By: masymas

masymas — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 00:22:00 -0800

also note the adversaries' attempt to get michael moore to the top for the term "failure"

this site gives a few other examples of successful googleboms

By: NinjaPirate

NinjaPirate — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 01:30:00 -0800

By the way, the guy who coined the phrase "GoogleBomb", Adam Mathes, and who created the first one at the expense of his friend was given a job at Google a couple of months ago.
That's something odd for your resume - "yeah, I was the one who started f*cking with your results for fun, please hire me". Glad they saw the funny side.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 02:54:08 -0800

"I'm feeling lucky" has definitely been there since the beginning, long before they had any advertising. The thing was, when you first saw it, you were amazed that it worked at all -- because other search engines were so haphazard.

And yes, I'm sure it remains because of unconscious goodwill rather than actual utilization. Remember, Google can still get something out of the statistics on who pushes that button and what for.

By: BigCalm

BigCalm — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 06:38:35 -0800

The 'I'm feeling lucky' button dates from the early days of google, at the time, they were making a statement - 'Our engine is good enough to find what you're looking for immediately'. In those days, when the competition was say webcrawler, lycos, or yahoo who sold #1 spot to whoever paid the most money, this was an essential selling point for google itself - it was a statement of intent and of quality of their search. The rest is largely history, but I'm slightly suprised that the lucky button is still there, especially since a lot of products like firefox actually use this to redirect immediately.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 06:52:08 -0800

especially since a lot of products like firefox actually use this to redirect immediately.

What does this mean? (/clueless)

I have to say, I've always enjoyed seeing "I'm feeling lucky" there but I don't think I've ever used it.

By: phearlez

phearlez — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 08:03:58 -0800

languagehat - if you go into the Firefox address bar and type some search terms it'll google them and take you to the first result, a la "i'm feeling lucky" as opposed to using the search box to the right of the address bar which gets you the full search results.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 09:04:14 -0800

Ah, thanks.

By: hellbient

hellbient — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 09:24:01 -0800

Maybe it's not a trick.
Maybe George W. Bush really is a top result failure.

By: Count Ziggurat

Count Ziggurat — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 13:31:33 -0800

I'd think Google leaves the I'm Feeling Lucky business up there 'cause taking it out might cause a shitstorm.

By: ceiriog

ceiriog — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 14:58:46 -0800

I don't think I've ever used it.

I use it when I can't remember if a site is foo.com, foo.co.uk, or foo.whatevar, but can't be arsed going through my bookmarks.

To get to a site that isn't on my bookmarks bar (Safari) I can either navigate through at least two levels of bookmarks with the mouse, or hit CMD-T, CMD-1 (Google), and type "welsh assembly" (say) and click Dwi'n teimlo'n lwcus to go where I want to go. I can type and click quicker than I can click, scroll, and click, so it woiks for me.