Tag: search

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I wanted to take a look at Firefox’s error page a few minutes ago, so I selected the address bar and hit some random keys. Due to a lack of sleep last night and a day of caffeine, I’d forgotten that if it can’t find a site with a given hostname (and still can’t find one through auto-complete), it automatically does a search for whatever you typed in.

I was rather surprised to see that a search for “klasjdf” turned up 508 hits.

As I think about it, it makes sense. Those letters are 7 of the 8 home keys on the QWERTY keyboard layout, and the eighth is not only a semi-colon, but home to a pinky. A touch typist hitting random keys might be inclined to just hit the ones that are already under his or her fingers. One per finger, leaving out the single non-letter, gets you exactly the 7 that I typed.

As for the letter order, I spot-checked a few permutations, the lowest of which was just 251 for klasdfj. Those with patterns scored higher: 18,400 for alskdjf (alternating left & right, working in from the edges to the center); 99,600 for asdfjkl (left-to-right).

I guess there must just be a lot of people typing random text. Infinite monkeying around, so to speak.

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It’s always interesting to see what people are searching for when they find this site. It’s even more interesting to look at the bottom of the list, the long tail full of one-off searches, some of which… can be really strange.

  • “what to do with tumbleweeds” — Hmm. Mash ’em, boil ’em, put ’em in a stew. Probably hit one of these.
  • “starbucks receipt fraud sandiego” — Now I’m curious. Unfortunately the search results seem to be mostly keyword farms (Only in San Diego)
  • “slave girls photos” and variations — I was lazy enough to use Google to pull up the two cosplay photos that tripped this one, and discovered a site called Leia’s Metal Bikini. Proving once again that there’s an interest group for everything on the Internet.
  • “can i get some free verse poems” — I’m not sure whether they wanted to get some poems, or read poems about people who want to get some.
  • “is raven real?” — 🙄 No, and she wasn’t two years ago either.
  • “what is avocados number” — The number of particles in a guaca-mole, of course.
  • “mopee stories” — Thankfully, these have been removed from continuity.
  • “hyena pitchers” and “pitchers of the hyena” — These are a mash-up of two hits from the last time I posted on this subject. Oddly, the only other instance of the word “hyena” on this domain isn’t there anymore.
  • “free verse poems about me” – Wow… I guess that article on self-esteem programs raising a generation of narcissists was right!
  • “hentai raven starfire teen titans” — You people scare me.
  • “where can i find free video for bare feet” — Um…. okaaayy.
  • “toe orgasm” — 😯 … I really don’t want to know.
  • “diy laptop battery” — Because nothing saves money like putting a homemade acid bath inside your computer.
  • “herakles pumpkin” — 😕 This could only pull up an archive page with unrelated posts.
  • “hot dogs logos” — They probably weren’t looking for the flying hot dogs Flash logo.
  • “do not play these songs at a wedding” — 😀 good idea.
  • “evil comics csa com” — well, there’s a Crime Syndicate of Amerika, but I didn’t realize they put out evil comics.

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Amazon.com’s search site, A9, has scaled back drastically. The rewards program is gone, as are bookmarks and history. They’ve even discontinued the A9 toolbar.

This of course brings up questions about some of the site integration technologies that they developed. OpenSearch has already taken on a life of its own, and in fact the new A9 seems to be mostly an OpenSearch aggregator. But what of SiteInfo? Continue reading →