Friday, May 06, 2011

Alphabet Google Meme

A meme, a meme. An embarrassing way of revealing and reviewing what I've been up to lately. An excuse for a blog post when I've been preoccupied with textbooks and visitors. All you do is go to your Google search bar and enter each letter of the alphabet in turn, reporting the first suggestion. That tells you what you've searched for most recently, or if you've never searched for anything beginning in that letter, then I think you get the most common recent search. I, for example, have never actually searched for anything beginning in the Old English letter thorn. I just threw it in to be silly.

adapted for American audience
bruschetta
calves weaned natuarally age
Dario
eth html
first air
geek holidays
Harry Potter changes american market
interference drag
jackson hole b757 runway
kwakiutlh
longcat
movethatbus.org
ntsb endorsement
ornithopter
parasite drag induced
Qesnel
russian vowels ipa
schwa html
tea cosy etymology
US gallons Jet A pounds
Viking twin otter
Wright Flyer
xaudaro
YNE
Zenith 5555
þingvellir

6 comments:

cockney steve said...

are you thinking of buying a r/c model ornithopter?

There are several U-Tube clips of a (highly-skilled) pilot flying one,-one attracted the local crow, protecting his territory. The same battery technology that allows compact phones and laptops,makes electric flight practical.
IIRC, Cessna has actually demonstrated a full-size electric aircraft.

The large proportion of aviation -related lookups has not gone unnoticed ;-)

John Lennerton said...

An interesting exercise, but hopelessly warped in my case. Almost every letter is preceded by the word "Boston"; I must have been searching for something in the city. In one case the same answer ("Boston Red Sox") appears for the letters B, R, and S.

I must be spending too much time at work looking up stats and scores. Burned.

coreydotcom said...

haha mine clearly identifies:

1 - country i live in
2 - province i live in
3 - city i live in
4 - language i speak
5 - where i've been on vacation
6 - my hobbies

lol it's me.

A Squared said...

Must work differently if you have a google tool bar installed. (I don't) If I do this with google I get a bunch of stuff I have never googled. As one example(but not the only one) I can tell you with absolute certainty that I have never goggled the Royal wedding, yet that is the first suggestion for "r".

DataPilot said...

While traveling out of state, I noticed that the Google drop-down was populated depending on my stated location. If you change your location from, say, Seattle to Orlando, you'll get different drop-downs and different search results.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to convince Google to set my location to a someplace outside of the US. When I attempt to set my location to a Canadian city, all I get is "Please enter a valid US city or zip code". Phooey. I really was curious about how my drop-down would be populated if I were Googling from Quebec.

The only time I got results like yours was when I put in the Old English letter thorn. (For people who want to try it - hold down ALT while typing 0222 on the numeric keypad.) þingvellir was at the top of my list, just like yours. Clearly, folks in my geographic area must not do many Þ queries!

A Squared said...

I noticed that the Google drop-down was populated depending on my stated location. If you change your location from, say, Seattle to Orlando, you'll get different drop-downs and different search results.

I don't think you even have to change your stated location. I've noticed that I'll get suggestions that are specific to my location, not sure if it interprets that from previous searches (I was earlier looking for a fed ex location near my hotel) or it uses ISP information or some other method. Whatever the process, it's not perfect. I'm in Minneapolis at the moment. If I type "restr....." Google will offer to search for restaurants in Minneapolis, but if type: McDo.. it will offer to search for McDonalds in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.