Untitled, vol. 1
I've decided to start blogging some of the randomness that I come across in my passionate pursuit of procrastination. Normally, I'd say to myself, Self, it's possible that no one will find this interesting but you, and refrain from posting. But what the hey... If a Generalist can't be random, who can be? Haven't decided what to call this little series yet, but I'm working on it.
The first installment: Bill Tancer's observations on the rise of Google in the current issue of Time magazine, which includes...
Google, in its transition from a noun to a verb, has become more than a tool to find information online, it's quickly becoming the default tool to navigate the web, replacing the browser URL bar as the way to move from one website to the next. How do we know this? The secret to Google's primary use can be found in the top searches that people enter on the site. The #1 term, representing over 4% of all U.S. searches on Google, is for the site that surpassed Google last summer to become the most popular domain on the Internet, "MySpace." In fact 17 of the top 20 searches on Google are searches for the other leading Internet sites such as "ebay," "yahoo," and "mapquest." The most puzzling search term that Internet users enter into a Google searchbox is the 14th most popular term: "Google." (In case you're keeping count, the three most popular terms that are not websites are: porn, free porn and lyrics.)
Now, it's possible that the only reason I find this interesting is that the whole "go to Google to get to MySpace" thing is really impressive to me. I mean, how hard is it to type "myspace" or "yahoo" into an address bar? Not terribly hard. It'd be like if someone was trying to get to the university's website and typed "puff" into a search engine. Because they know I'm heavy on campus like that. Or, it'd be like if I worked for some really prestigious company, and people searched for the company website using my name almost as often as they used the actual name of the company. I'm just saying...
(Sidenote: Google's hybrid map function is freakin ridiculous, though the jury's still out on the street view.)
The first installment: Bill Tancer's observations on the rise of Google in the current issue of Time magazine, which includes...
Google, in its transition from a noun to a verb, has become more than a tool to find information online, it's quickly becoming the default tool to navigate the web, replacing the browser URL bar as the way to move from one website to the next. How do we know this? The secret to Google's primary use can be found in the top searches that people enter on the site. The #1 term, representing over 4% of all U.S. searches on Google, is for the site that surpassed Google last summer to become the most popular domain on the Internet, "MySpace." In fact 17 of the top 20 searches on Google are searches for the other leading Internet sites such as "ebay," "yahoo," and "mapquest." The most puzzling search term that Internet users enter into a Google searchbox is the 14th most popular term: "Google." (In case you're keeping count, the three most popular terms that are not websites are: porn, free porn and lyrics.)
Now, it's possible that the only reason I find this interesting is that the whole "go to Google to get to MySpace" thing is really impressive to me. I mean, how hard is it to type "myspace" or "yahoo" into an address bar? Not terribly hard. It'd be like if someone was trying to get to the university's website and typed "puff" into a search engine. Because they know I'm heavy on campus like that. Or, it'd be like if I worked for some really prestigious company, and people searched for the company website using my name almost as often as they used the actual name of the company. I'm just saying...
(Sidenote: Google's hybrid map function is freakin ridiculous, though the jury's still out on the street view.)
posted by Puff at 6:06 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home