Thursday, March 27, 2008

How people query now isn't evocative of natural language

'kitchen-floor conflict intensifies as rival house cats claim same empty bag analysis'

By far the strangest query that returned results matching my blog, and where a person actually selected my blog as a result.

What the heck was that person looking for?

It almost makes sense. It sounds like there's been some research done that examines the behavior of cats when an empty (but possibly smelly) bag is thrown in between them. What do they do? Let's find out...amazing! Put the results on the Internets!

We've become so used to entering in a string of keywords (since that's how Google returns results: keywords in indexed pages bubble to the top) in a way that's not how we think or speak.

Perhaps the notion of *asking* a question will become more prevalent in people's minds when conducting a search in the coming months...

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