Does Google return the same search results to everyone, or does it customize the results based on some information its cookies have adduced about you? By my Google search results, anyway, our blog has now climbed all the way to #2 for What You Get If You Search For Scatterplot, preceded only by the 3000-lb page-rank monster that is the Wikipedia Entry. I wonder sometimes why Google doesn’t just replace its “I’m Feeling Lucky” button with “Search Wikipedia.”
Also, almost forgot: Happy Free Comic Book Day! Don’t everyone rush out to get yours all at once.
8 Comments
FWIW - i get the same (this scatterplot as the #2 result), and i primarily read here through RSS feeds (so it may be universal, or we may just search for similar things). i’ve been wondering the same based on some of the seemingly “too good” results it’s returned to me of late for various searches i’ve made.
I also think this is because of how scatter plot is one word in the search engine - if you type “scatter plot”, this blog is #11.
I got the same results as SI and GM
It’s #3 when I google it. Wikipedia is #1 followed by what looks like notes from a 1997 stats 101 course at Yale.
I got what jimgibbon got.
oh weird, its like #7 for me.
i wonder if you pissed off the google by talking about it.
I don’t think they personalize by user (yet), but I’m quite sure they do so by location, e.g. country. You could test this by doing searches while logged into GMail and not, or while VPNing to some other location than your ordinary login place (especially helpful if you can vpn to a network in another country).
I got the same results (for scatterplot) when logged into Gmail and when not. Can’t help on the vpn-to-a-network-in-another-country thing.