Google Blogoscoped

Forum

[Meta] Please Send In Your News Tips!  (View post)

mf [PersonRank 1]

Saturday, February 9, 2008
16 years ago4,083 views

Here's a news tip for you:

If you search for "gry" (Polish "games") you'll see two Google ads to the right, one redirecting to search results of "gry" on YouTube, and the other one to iGoogle.
http://www.google.pl/search?q=gry&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

According to Google Trends, "gry" is the most popular search term on Google (originating from Poland). It's more popular than "sex" and "allegro" (popular auction site).
http://google.com/trends?q=gry,+sex,+allegro&geo=pol&sa=N

These two ads look like a cheap way to increase traffic to Google's own sites at the cost of user expierience. IIRC Google once said they didn't like links to search result pages in their search results so why do they think it makes sense to have them in the ads?

ash [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

"and so on" ... is there really anything else to add to that list :P

beussery [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]mf

Very interesting information and great catch! Just FYI there is also a famous school age riddle that might help explain some of traffic for this "word" in other languages.

Here is the riddle:
"There are three words in the English language that end in -gry. One is hungry and one is angry; what is the third?"

Good luck! :)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

WorldWideWords.org cites this as the original riddle:

<<There are two words that end with “gry”.
Angry is one and hungry is another.
What is the third word.
Everyone uses it every day and
Everyone knows what it means.
If you have been listening,
I have already told you what the word is.>>

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

In the past I would have just gone to Google Sets (in Google Labs), typed in "angry" and "hungry", and the answer would probably have been shown.

Today I went to Google Labs, then clicked on Google Sets and got a Page Not Found message. That's a pity; I rather liked Sets.

I remember the day I discovered it. I typed in "John Paul George" and it added "Ringo". I thought that was rather cool.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Dang. I use this about once a month or so. Will have to ask Google where this disappeared to! If this was an intentional remove, wouldn't they also have removed the link from the labs while at it?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

PS: You can have something Set-like in Google Spreadsheets... the auto-fill trick http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-06-n41.html

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Noooooooo!

R.I.P.
Google Sets
2002-2008

:(

George R [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Spoiler:
http://www.fun-with-words.com/word_gry_angry_hungry.html

beussery [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

http://labs.google.com/sets

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I'm glad Google Sets is back, although it didn't give the answer to this puzzle, because the answer is not a member of the set of words ending in "gry"!

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Google replied in regards to the temporary demise of Google Sets:

<<Looks like you helped us catch and fix a bug! Everything should be working again – give it a spin and let me know.>>

Forum home

Advertisement

 
Blog  |  Forum     more >> Archive | Feed | Google's blogs | About
Advertisement

 

This site unofficially covers Google™ and more with some rights reserved. Join our forum!