Comments on: Why does typing "ass" in an address window take me to the Democrats blog?

Question: Why does typing "ass" in an address window take me to the Democrats blog?

Scram — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 18:45:23 -0800

Address Bar-filter. How is it that typing just "ass" into my browser's address window resolves to the Democratic Party's blog... [more inside] while "ass.com" is an aggregation of anal sex links? Are the dems both profiting from sex links and redirecting potentially interested blog readers, or is ass.com unrelated to just plain "ass"? (And hey, I was just trying to get to my Amazon Associates account info and hit return prematurely, honest.)

By: rxrfrx

rxrfrx — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 18:47:28 -0800

because it's the result of a google "i'm feeling lucky" search for "ass."

By: interrobang

interrobang — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 18:48:57 -0800

rxrfrx is right. Type "failure" in there.

By: planetthoughtful

planetthoughtful — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 18:50:38 -0800

Probably an unexpected sideeffect of Google's ranking algorithms. The title for the blog in question is "DNC: Kicking Ass". I assume that, combined with overall link popularity to the site, has floated it to the top for "ass" as a search term.

By: ALongDecember

ALongDecember — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 18:51:47 -0800

Firefox uses Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" when you type a phrase into the location bar. Kicking Ass is the first result for ass on google. Sorry, no conspiracy.

I won't ask why you typed 'ass' into the search bar. On preview: what everyone said.

By: ALongDecember

ALongDecember — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 18:58:52 -0800

Ohhh I see... sorry Scram, missed the last bit of your explanation.

By: rebirtha

rebirtha — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 19:33:51 -0800

(And hey, I was just trying to get to my Amazon Associates account info and hit return prematurely, honest.)

That happens to me all the time.

By: Tuwa

Tuwa — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 19:59:39 -0800

If you want to turn off this keyword-matching behavior, type about:config into the location bar, hit enter, then go to keyword.enabled and toggle that to 'false.' Warning: that will turn off the Google end of it, not the feature that appends a .com to any random word you type in, such as 'ass' or, I don't know 'cucumber' or 'monastery'.

If you want to turn off domain guessing too (where the browser takes any random word and prepends www. and appends .com to see if it works, it's about:config --> browser.fixup.alternate.enabled & then toggle to 'false.' Then you too can get delightful error messages like "ass could not be found. Please check the name and try again."

By: orlin

orlin — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 20:22:21 -0800

The most logical reason is that there is a strong relationship, or correlation, between both keywords.

By: cali

cali — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:58:55 -0800

Not surprising to me, considering that the symbol of the Democratic Party is the donkey (aka "ass"):

By: Sharcho

Sharcho — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 10:23:33 -0800

If you use the address bar a lot, you'd probably like YubNub