A Letter From Santa To The Search Community

December, 2011

The North Pole

Dear Search Community:

Thanks so much for your many letters to the north pole. Your nicely written texts and emails included some familiar requests from last year and some entirely new ones. Lisa and Ian, I’m very sorry, I can’t drop that referring keyword data  from signed in users down the chimney. And Eric, I’m really sorry that the European Debt Crisis, which was my answer to your request from last year “Give European regulators something else to think about” didn’t really pan out.

So I’m taking time off from wrapping all those iPhone 4s and Kindle Fires to lodge some requests with the search community from Kris Kringle. I’ve been good to you over the years and it is time you helped Santa fix some of these search problems.

First off, I did a little online reputation management monitoring:

“Including results for Christopher”!  Only Mrs. Klaus calls me Christopher, and only when I’ve been naughty (don’t ask how naughty.)

And see that second result . . . for a site called MySpace? It brings good little girls and boys to a promotional page for the album “The Strip Joint”, but a certain imposter named Chris Kringle. The only thing we have in common is a strange fondness for matching velvet suits. Based on what he sings about, he’ll be getting nothing but coal for him and his shortys.

Next, I checked out my local results, and clearly I have a long way to go. Kiddos from all over the world are searching for my address to write letters and this is the best we can do?

And what’s the deal with this site called Wikipedia?  It seems to have the corner on the holiday market.  Here’s “rudolph”:

Even my nickname (get it – “Nick” name?) delivers Wikipedia:

And “reindeer”.  (Please note that I’m very unhappy about the “Reindeer hunting in Greenland” link on this site. Seems the Greenland Board of Tourism has been trolling around in Wikipedia. How can we get rid of that?)

Now for my trademarked term, “Merry Christmas”, we get a 1994 Mariah Carey album on Wikipedia. Are you out of your mind?! Even Mrs. Klaus doesn’t listen to that stuff anymore.

That reminds me, some kid named Bieber sent me a letter back in October asking for that album. Apparently that’s all he wants for Christmas:

I’m extremely annoyed with the results for  “Ho Ho Ho”. After the two wikipedia entries, I stumbled across something called Urban Dictionary. I’ll assure you this is NOT what I mean when I chuckle merrily:

Fortunately “gingerbread” delivers something completely different (that frankly I don’t understand at all).

I guess I should be happy that with the over commercialization of the holiday season, none of these terms have been appropriated by those black Friday crazy retailers. Seems like a lost opportunity eh? But what would I know…

It makes me wonder though, why there’s not a single ad for the term “Christmas” on Google?  (and yes . . . that’s Wikipedia again.)

Are the engineers in Mountain View holding the holiday sacred? Not the same over at Bing, which helpfully reminds people of the exact date Christmas too. (And yes – there’s Wikipedia yet again.)

On the bright side, I’m glad that my summer side business seems to be doing very well on search.

Be well search community. Perhaps you can help me out this year. In the meantime, remember, I’m not the only one watching the search results to see who’s been naughty or nice.

Happy Holidays!

Love,

Santa