
Putting "Search" into Google yields a surprising result - ColinWright
http://www.google.com/search?q=search
======
js2
A few years back, Sergey and Larry were on NPR's Fresh Air. At one point in
the interview, Terry Gross says "I tried searching for 'Google' by putting
'Google' into the search box and clicking I'm Feeling Lucky, but it didn't
seem to do anything." Larry tries to explain what happened, but it seemed to
go over Terry's head. At one point during the explanation I think Sergey
mentioned recursion, and Terry asks "Recur-what?" To which Larry's reply was
something like "Sergey is just geeking out, nevermind."

edit: maybe I'm misrembering the details a bit. From
<http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/17770.htm> -

"Yah, it was a pretty interesting segment. Sergey talked about idempotence. :)
The host (terry gross?) wondered why when you go to www.google.com and type in
google and hit I'm Feeling Lucky, it went back to the main google page. Larry
called it recursion. I could just imagine NPR listeners' heads shaking all
across America. :)"

~~~
ja2ke
Side note: With results-as-you-type now being the default even from the Google
front page, isn't "I'm feeling lucky" a totally vestigial button at this
point?

~~~
uxp
Another non-cited story I've heard is an A/B test, or similar, was once done
where they removed the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button from the front page, and an
overwhelming number of users said they did not like the solitary search
button. Having both gave the users a sense of choice, even though (as the
story goes), "I'm feeling lucky" is used by only a small fraction of a percent
of users.

~~~
joe_the_user
And humorously enough, the present "I'm feeling lucky" button literally
_cannot be pressed_ ... except on the initial, empty search box ... under
which circumstances it leads you to ... a list old Google Doodles... Feelin'
Lucky now? Guy...

~~~
Retric
Umm, I just used it and it worked fine.

List > (i am feeling lucky) =
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_%28programming_language%29>

PS: Not everyone enables scripts.

~~~
joe_the_user
I suppose it depends on the browser and whether you use Google instant (which
is on by default).

As soon as I type a letter, the "lucky" button vanishes.

------
uvTwitch
This makes sense to me. If you're using google to find 'search', you're
probably not searching for google.

~~~
sixtofour
Unless you don't know what search is, and you don't know you're using search.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Good point, the first result should be to the Wikipedia article on search.

------
nostrademons
This is ancient, it's been like this since before I joined Google, which was
before Bing came out. I think back then Dogpile was #1 (??), then Yahoo, then
MSN Live. Occasionally it comes up and people get a good chuckle out of it.

~~~
dholowiski
So honestly, shouldn't google show up as the top result for search? Does the
fact that it doesn't prove that Google does, occasionally manually 'fudge'
search results?

~~~
FreeWorld
Well, why would google put itself as the top search result, when you are
already on google search. And also, recently, there was some complaint (don't
remember exactly who filed the complaint) about the anti-competitive movement
of google when it comes to always showing google maps results when searching
for locations. Anyhow, just my view of this.

~~~
chrischen
Why would Dogpile come up as #1?

------
thought_alarm
I suppose that's what $2.6 billion in annual operating losses buys you.

~~~
polynomial
ouch.

~~~
polynomial
I knew there would be those who negged that comment. Get a life people, get a
life.

------
benologist
It's not that surprising, Google doesn't have to optimize for 'search' because
they're synonymous for it.

~~~
MattBearman
Not only that, but if you're already on _Google_ searching for 'search',
Google is clearly not what you're looking for...

~~~
farnsworth
You haven't seen some of my friends try to use a computer.

~~~
MattBearman
It's only worse when they use Chrome's omninbar to Google 'Google', then
Google 'Google' on Google to get to Google

~~~
eftpotrm
I remember once seeing a list of top X popular searches which included the
term 'www.hotmail.com'. While I've no doubt it'd work, the level of
understanding necessary to even attempt it is somewhat scary.

~~~
colanderman
Um, I consider myself a native of computer-land and do this _all the time_.
People accidentally type stuff in the wrong place. That doesn't mean they're
cretins.

~~~
uxp
My father's computer uses msn.com as the homepage, which automatically grabs
the focus and puts in in the search field of MSN. I'd guess that 90% of his
queries on MSN are w.example.com, where the first "W"s are in the address bar
where he placed his cursor, and then the actual input is queried to Bing.

------
highace
_"Dogpile.com makes searching the Web easy, because it has all the best search
engines piled into one."_

My brain just exploded.

~~~
saucetenuto
Don't knock it, in the late 90s every search engine sucked in its own special
way. Dogpile was great back then, and IIRC that's how I first encountered
Google.

~~~
Vivtek
Yeah, there was a brief window in the mid-90's when Dogpile was definitely in
the top 2. It replaced Metacrawler as my main search for a few months, as I
recall.

~~~
officemonkey
I used Altavista right up until I first heard of Google. Before Altavista I
used Webcrawler (<http://thinkpink.com/bp/WebCrawler/History.html>).

~~~
coderholic
Ahh you're bringing back memories. I was av.com (altavista) before google, and
yahoo.com before that. It's easy to forget how much search engines sucked
before google.

~~~
glassx
Same here!

But I remember using Altavista for a long time after switching to Google
because of Babelfish (translator0 and Image Search (was it Altavista?)

Today I use DuckDuckGo a lot.

~~~
Vivtek
Yup, that was Altavista.

------
tryke
Since "Google" has become its own verb, it makes sense that few people link to
google.com with the word "Search".

------
harel
Search for 'search' on Bing and Google comes up first as well:
[http://www.bing.com/search?q=search&go=&qs=n&sk=...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=search&go=&qs=n&sk=&sc=8-4&form=QBLH&filt=all)

They return the favour perhaps?

~~~
madiator
Yahoo for me too

~~~
chucknthem
search.com came up first for me

~~~
mkopinsky
I have Yahoo, search.com, Videos of Search (!) and then google.

~~~
duck
Hmmmm.... <http://dontbubble.us/>

------
Groxx
My guess for the reason is this:
<http://www.google.com/trends?q=google%2C+search>

Note the epic rise of "google" as a search, and the _decline_ of "search".
"Googling" is _replacing_ "searching".

------
luigi
Maybe it's because in recent years, much more has been written about Bing as a
search engine.

------
markokocic
What's even funnier, if you click on "I'm Feeling Lucky", you are
automatically transferred to Bing.

It would be nice if they would prepopulate Bing search box with search query.

~~~
danparsonson
The 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button just redirects you to the top result doesn't
it?

------
hrabago
Wasn't it just a few weeks ago, there were complaints that Google favored its
own properties in its search results? What happens to that claim now?

~~~
clobber
Just do a search for anything local and you'll see.

------
mcherm
Some things go without saying.

That, of course, means they go without linking.

------
glassx
Hotmail is #1 result for me when you search for "e-mail". :-)

<http://f.cl.ly/items/1X081Z0a2P1E2y2J3U0Y/email.png>

(Gmail is still #1 for "mail" though, probably because of their URL -
mail.google.com)

------
nsavant
I never "search" for things. I "google" them.

------
jameshart
And the irony is, that Bing's advertising is all about how instead of
'searching', Bing is for 'deciding'. Yet they're not even on the first page
for 'decide'. More SEO needed :)

------
rkalla
Incase the result gets changed, here is the search result page (Bing is #1)

<http://i.imgscalr.com/kmPbJfLoV.png>

~~~
solipsist
Not that you may care, but posting photos of Google search result pages is now
a dangerous thing and comes with a bunch of privacy concerns.

Search result pages are personalized based on your previous searches and
location. Simply from the image we can tell where you live (even if it didn't
say so explicitly in the left tool bar).

~~~
ansgri
And even tells that you're on Windows (characteristic ClearType).

------
pawelwentpawel
Pretty sure that they know about it. Just shows the google's strong position
on the market - then can show bing.com as the first result and still remain
the first-choice web search engine ever created.

Not sure whats up with the "feeling lucky" button as if you type something to
the input box, it redirects you straight to the live search. You cannot really
specify what do you want feel lucky about ;)

------
Aqwis
Google Search doesn't appear at all if I do the search on Google.no. Yahoo
comes first, followed by Bing and search.com. Twitter, AOL and 4shared (a file
sharing site) are all on the list, and so is "Google Insights for Search".

I wonder if this reflects the relative popularity of the alternative search
engines in different countries. Google's search ranking algorithms hold many
mysteries.

------
jimbokun
The interesting thing for me is that it returned a couple of Japanese results
in the first page, with the characters "検索" highlighted. I've done a few
Japanese searches from this computer before, which I guess is why it's giving
me Japanese results, but I was surprised to see them translate search into
Japanese and rank the results along with the English results.

------
btilly
The most surprising thing about it for me is that it told me that someone I
knew had shared bing on buzz earlier this year.

------
ronnier
This is good for Google. They don't want to appear to be a monopoly. Google
needs Bing to be mildly successful.

------
pcj
[http://www.bing.com/search?setmkt=en-
US&q=search](http://www.bing.com/search?setmkt=en-US&q=search) gives you Yahoo
as the first result. Google is 3rd result.

------
madiator
By the way, I realized that I cannot click on "I'm felling lucky" anymore for
any keyword since the google instant immediately fires up.. :( Used to spend
quite a bit of time doing that.

------
lawlit
This one is more surprising : <http://www.google.com/search?q=search+engine>

------
beforebeta
Google appears as the last result on the search page!

~~~
nycgags
same here, 1st result: newyork.citysearch.com - New York, NY City Guide -
Reviews and Recommendations by Citysearch

------
marquis
It also knew very well what my location is and was blatant in using this
knowledge to direct me to my local citysearch, for example.

------
anirudh
I wonder why they even have the "I am lucky" or even the Google Search button
as tyrping even a letter takes me to the results page.

------
autumn_
Google is first on google.com.au

~~~
freakwit
Yeah, I did the search, saw google.com.au first and wasn't surprised at all.

For those interested, but not interested enough to visit the AU site the
results are: 1\. www.google.com.au 2\. www.bing.com 3\. jobsearch.gov.au 4\.
www.dogpile.com 5\. www.seek.com.au 6\. www.search.com 7\.
www.webwombat.com.au 8\. au.altavista.com 9\. www.peoplesearch.com.au 10\.
www.search.org.au

Basically a bunch of search engines, a couple of job sites and a couple of
sites with search in their name.

------
daspecster
bing.com has yahoo at the top haha.
[http://www.bing.com/search?q=search&go=&qs=n&sk=...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=search&go=&qs=n&sk=&sc=8-0&form=QBLH)

------
thethimble
Google's first result is Bing.

Bing's first result is Yahoo.

Yahoo's first result is Yahoo. Way to break the cycle.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Yahoo uses Bing...

------
mmphosis
<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=search>

<http://gigablast.com/search?q=search>

------
chintan
Take a look at Sponsered Ads on bing and google

------
sung1
Maybe this is some sort of inside joke?

------
kang
A proof that Google is so ethical !

------
known
Google _sells_ advertisements.

------
suyash
if you type "search engine" google doen't even show up on the 1st page
atleast.

------
okeumeni
I can't see duckduck :(

------
winsbe01
dogpile is still around? didn't know that.

------
bsphil
Oh, algorithms.

------
Daniel_Newby
On Bing, "search" goes to Yahoo.

~~~
DanielRibeiro
Which (unsurprisingly, as noted by the replies) itself yields Yahoo when you
search "search" [1]

[1]
[http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AjCXgFY8lSKJSSw5JLdr1HSb...](http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AjCXgFY8lSKJSSw5JLdr1HSbvZx4?p=search&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-413)

~~~
mukyu
Yahoo uses Bing.

~~~
antimora
But Google comes before Bing in the search results.

~~~
mukyu
The point was that since Yahoo uses Bing for its search you should not expect
different results from Bing (that is to say, there is not point searching
'search' on Yahoo after you did it on Bing).

------
hackermom
Where's Altavista? :)

~~~
Leynos
It kind of scares me that altavista.com still exists. It scares me even more
that hotbot.com still exists.

~~~
a1k0n
Ha, altavista.com is just a Yahoo! search box.

~~~
esrauch
Wait, isn't Yahoo! just a Bing search box?

~~~
parfe
As of a couple months ago when I asked this question in relation to
duckduckgo.com: Yahoo's primary search page uses Bing, but yahoos API search
features still use Yahoo's old system. At some point in the future Yahoo will
move the api to use Bing as well. No idea if that time has come and gone.

------
enthalpyx
... and what does not come up as the first result for "decision"?

