Apr 1, 2012 at 3:37am ET by Matt McGee

It was right about this time last year when we gave Google the winner's trophy for a series of gags that put all others to shame. We could do the same again right now, because Google has tried to top itself with another round of April Fool's Day jokes that pretty well span the globe of Google's international properties. Below is a recap of Google's (and a few others) pranks, and we'll do our best to update this as the day goes along. Google Racing: Self-Driving Cars Hit NASCAR The main joke at the moment is Google's "announcement" of a partnership with NASCAR called Google Racing, whi [...]

Santorum’s Changing “Google Problem” — & Search Engine Land — Make The Rachel Maddow Show

Mar 8, 2012 at 5:50pm ET by Danny Sullivan

As we covered last week, Google's search results for a search on "santorum" have gotten a lot cleaner recently. The change was featured on The Rachel Maddow Show last night, and Search Engine Land's coverage got a big shout-out. The clip is below, as well as an update on all things Santorum and Google. Santorum himself is finally number one, and that SafeSearch change Google made turns out not to be so safe. Maddow Covers The Santorum Shuffle “Spreading Santorum” Drops At Google is our story from last week and provides all the background about how the "Speading Santorum" site -- created [...]

“Spreading Santorum” Drops At Google; New Site Keeps Anal Sex Definition At Number One

Feb 29, 2012 at 2:12am ET by Danny Sullivan

As Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum loses two primary races to rival Mitt Romney, perhaps he can console himself with, ironically, another loss. Spreading Santorum, the page defining "santorum" as a by-product of anal sex, has finally dropped from the top results on Google. The related anti-Santorum blog, however, remains. And a page from Urban Dictionary keeps the definition alive, more explicit than before. Santorum: The Definition Page The page at SpreadingSantorum.com, created by columnist Dan Savage as a protest against Santorum's views about homosexuality, has maintain [...]

Google, Yahoo Both Fail At Moneyballing Oscar Predictions

Feb 27, 2012 at 12:47pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Both Google and Yahoo used search data to create their own Oscar ballots. Turns out, their predictions were terribly wrong. At best, Google may have correctly predicted Meryl Streep winning, depending on how you read things. But overall, neither of them really got the winners right. Google's predictions are here; Yahoo's here. Let's see how they did! Best Picture Google: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (or The Artist, Midnight In Paris) Yahoo: War Horse Winner: The Artist What went wrong here? With Google, it's actually hard to know what it was predicting. It narrowed thi [...]

Related Topics: Search & Society: General | Top News

Is SEO Killing America?

Feb 23, 2012 at 4:55pm ET by Vanessa Fox

Last week at the Tools of Change conference, Clay Johnson, author of the new book The Information Diet gave a keynote talk titled "Is SEO Killing America". Sigh. If you've been involved in search for any length of time, your first reaction may be, this again? Haven't we done this before? Once or twice? Clay's a friend of mine and I've read his book (it's quite good, by the way), so I knew both that he doesn't really think that SEO is killing America and that he's unaware just how much we're all over this particular linkbait-y title. And indeed his talk was not about how SEO is kill [...]

Related Topics: Features: Analysis | Search & Society: General | Top News

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