Google and Predictive Searching
December 15th, 2009
Jessamyn links to an interesting article about Google’s switch to personalized searching - really, check it out, because it will impact patrons using public computers.
But it also reminded me of how much more prevalent Google’s autocomplete feature has seemed lately. I know it’s been around for awhile, but I’ve noticed it more for some reason, and have also been seeing it in Google’s ads on Hulu.com (which I oddly could not find to link to), failblog, YouTube* and elsewhere.
So I got curious about what the Google zeitgeist would say about library-related phrases - here’s what I found:
(a band)
(They just check out? They get weeded? They become overdue?)
And I had to try this too:
(I think most of these are Family Guy references.)
Update 1/11/10: Using Google suggestions, check out the difference between what girlfriends and boyfriends are thinking.
*The one at 2:39 is my favorite. Actually, a lot of them are probably song lyrics, but how often do you come across a Dead Milkmen reference?
[December 15th, 2009 at 12:38 pm | permalink]
This is awesome!!! There should be more exercises with what Google Autocomplete returns.
Love it!
[December 15th, 2009 at 4:56 pm | permalink]
Thanks Brian! I don’t think I would have known about this without this post. I searched “Cari” and got my own full name (which was creepy enough) and then a bunch of words that start with “Cari” (Caribou Coffee, Caribbean, etc.)
[December 16th, 2009 at 12:15 pm | permalink]
>how often do you come across a Dead Milkmen reference?
Every day when I ride in my bitchin’ camaro, which is surprisingly popular with four-year-old library vistors.
[December 26th, 2009 at 9:24 pm | permalink]
[...] Swiss Army Librarian ยป Google and Predictive Searching :: Brian Herzog [...]
[December 31st, 2009 at 1:57 am | permalink]
I don’t know when it changed, but until very recently, when one typed “I like to” into Google, the autocomplete suggested as the first choice the very weird “I like to tape my thumbs to my hands to see what it would be like to be a dinosaur”.
I don’t know who searches for these things.
[January 10th, 2010 at 4:33 pm | permalink]
[...] Posted in Uncategorized tagged funny, google at 4:53 pm by Andromeda A librarian plays with Google’s autocomplete feature. Hilarity ensues. [...]