"Miserable Failure"

[Nova Land]

I don't know if anyone else has posted this bit yet, and am in somewhat of a rush again today so don't have time to browse carefully to check, so if this is a duplicate of someone else's thread my apologies.

I also don't know whether to put this in Politics, Humor, or Community Forum...

This is from today's entry in Peter David's web log (http://peterdavid.net/):
Thursday, December 4, 2003

GO TO GOOGLE...
...type in the words "Miserable Failure" (include the quotes) and then hit "I Feel Lucky."

And don't come bitching to me about it if you don't like the result.
Edited to add: for those who come to this late and Google has changed the result, the site you are currently being directed to is http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

[Cleon]

LOL...Priceless. Up until a few months ago, if you entered "Go to Hell" and hit the IFL button, you wound up at microsoft.com.

I fully believe this is intentional by the Google coders. :)

[Grammatron]

My favorite one is puting in "french military victories" and hitting the I'm Feeling Lucky button.

[Nova Land]

Originally posted by Cleon

I fully believe this is intentional by the Google coders. :) That was theorized over at PeterDavid.net as well. I'm inclined to agree, especially since the phrase "miserable failure" does not seem to appear anywhere on the page linked to.

And it seems doubtful that the phrase "French military victories" does not appear in any documents on the web (as the page Googling that phrase leads to claims) since there must be a number of places (such as this one) suggesting to people that they type that phrase into Google (and discussing what happens when they do).

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by Nova Land

And it seems doubtful that the phrase "French military victories" does not appear in any documents on the web (as the page Googling that phrase leads to claims) since there must be a number of places (such as this one) suggesting to people that they type that phrase into Google (and discussing what happens when they do).
You can verify that by hitting the usual 'Search' button instead of 'I feel lucky'.

[headscratcher4]

Indeed, one would think if you ran "Borodino" or "Austerlitz", for example, you would come up with a document that describes a "french milatary victories"

However, "miserable failure" seems logical to me....:p

[Nova Land]

Originally posted by arcticpenguin

You can verify that by hitting the usual 'Search' button instead of 'I feel lucky'. Good suggestion!

Interestingly, the very same page (asserting that "No standard web pages containing all your search terms were found" and suggesting one try looking under "French military defeats") comes up at the top of the list...

... followed by 4,129 entries containing the phrase "French military victories.

[clk]

Originally posted by Nova Land

Interestingly, the very same page (asserting that "No standard web pages containing all your search terms were found" and suggesting one try looking under "French military defeats") comes up at the top of the list...


Yes, that page is actually a page from another independent site, not Google. When you hit "I'm feeling lucky", it just takes you to the top site in the search result.

[Cleon]

Originally posted by Nova Land
That was theorized over at PeterDavid.net as well. I'm inclined to agree, especially since the phrase "miserable failure" does not seem to appear anywhere on the page linked to.

And it seems doubtful that the phrase "French military victories" does not appear in any documents on the web (as the page Googling that phrase leads to claims) since there must be a number of places (such as this one) suggesting to people that they type that phrase into Google (and discussing what happens when they do).

Actually, after further research at Slashdot, I have to retract my statement that it's an intentional coding thing.

The way Google ranks pages is by the number of people who link to it and use the given phrases; it's a rather complicated algorithm. Apparently there are enough pages out there that contain the phrase "miserable idiot" and a link the bio to point the IFL button to it.

This may be the result of a "Google bomb;" someone creating so many pages out there with the link and that phrase to deliberately force the IFL button in that direction.

[bangdazap]

Originally posted by Grammatron
My favorite one is puting in "french military victories" and hitting the I'm Feeling Lucky button.
Sieg Heil ;)

[Cecil]

http://www.blah3.com/graymatter/archives/00000654.html

From this day forth, I will refer to George W. Bush as a Miserable Failure at least once a day. Why, you ask? Well, someone came up with this great idea to link George W. Bush and Miserable Failure in popular search engines. If you have a blog or web site, help raise the link between George W. Bush and the phrase 'miserable failure' by copying this link and placing somewhere on your site or blog. The words "Miserable Failure" on that site are a link to the Bush page.