The New York Times‘ Bits Blog has a neat post in which they run through Google suggested search and see what the first suggested results are for each letter of the alphabet. So: A is Amazon, B is Best Buy, C is Craigslist, D is Dictionary.com, et cetera. Bits expresses surprise that Hotmail nabbed the H, but: nothing too surprising.
We thought: why not run the same experiment on an obscurer, lower-volume search engine and see what happens. For whatever reason, we picked metasearch engine Dogpile. The results were pretty random. A was still Amazon, but: the top result for B was “bath body works coupons.” C was “county jail inmate search.” It got even stranger from there:
A: Amazon
B: bath body works coupons
C: county jail inmate search
D: download microsoft word
E: ebay
F: face book login (#2: “funny christmas poems”)
G: google
H: horoscope
I: inmate search
J: jail inmate
K: kohls
L: leo
M: mapquest (#2: “miley cyrus dress up game”)
N: new moon
O: office christmas party games
P: piano sheet music
Q: quotes life
R: resume objectives sample
S: song search by lyrics
T: track down santa claus
U: unemployment claim filing
V: virgo
W: walmart
X: THERE IS NO X
Y: youtube
Z: zip code directory
(h/t Bits for the idea; image via rustybrick’s Flickr)
Published: Jan 25, 2010 01:41 pm