Disqus - Latest Comments for Aleceast

Re: The BBC is all 50 of the top 50 results on Google News for the term ‘news’

Aleceast — Mon, 14 May 2018 19:23:22 -0000

I was referring to Google hiding similar results from the same site and only listing 10 results by default, but that was before I realised you had done something completely bonkers to get your results.

I managed to replicate your results by doing something so ridiculous that I'm amazed you weren't embarassed to admit your foolishness.

To get your results, I had to search for "news" within the news category!

If you walked into a hardware shop and said "I want some hardware" you would get a baffled response from the staff. And that's what you got from Google when searched for "news" in the news category.

If that average user you mention searches for "news" normally, like an average user would, they would get a massively broad spectrum of news outlets to choose from.

But searching for "news" within a news category is as daft as searching for "video" in the video category.

In fact, searching for "video" within Google's video category follows the same pattern and offers some insight that the article lacks.

Quite simply, Google's algorithm doesn't know what to do with the search term because the word "video" has no real context within a video category, so it falls back to returning results from the most popular, linked and regularly updated source that mentions video - which is YouTube. It returns 5 pages of almost 100% YouTube links.

That's a strikingly similar behaviour to your search for news within News category. You simply got the most popular, linked and freshest content containing "news" which, in the UK, happens to be the BBC.

Is something wrong? Not really, it's just an absurd search that's returning an equally absurd result. It's such a rare user behaviour (not something an average user would intentionally do) that it's not worth coding an exception for it.

The US results are different because the US is about 20 times the size of the UK landmass, with a lot more regional news outlets and no single dominant player, so when it shows the most popular, linked and freshest content, it has a wider pool to display.

So, there you go. Google is actually just doing exactly what the staff in the hardware shop are doing, and respondng with confusion to a request from someone who doesn't seem to know where they are or what they want.

Re: The BBC is all 50 of the top 50 results on Google News for the term ‘news’

Aleceast — Mon, 14 May 2018 15:27:29 -0000

It isn't though, is it.

In fact it couldn't possibly all be BBC in a standard result because Google's SERPs don't work that way.

Re: The Dunning-Kruger Peak of Advertising

Aleceast — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 17:34:47 -0000

Isn't it also true that the more we know, the more risk averse we tend to become?

Without the confidence that ignorance of our own shortcomings gives us, many of us would never start businesses, question old ideas or take any risks.

I would suggest there would be less innovation without the self-delusional confidence, because you make your own rules when you don't know that a rulebook already exists.

Ignorance, once applied to task, leads heuristic experimentation by default, and that can create happy accidents (as well as unfortunate ones). Punk, for example, was about naive confidence to break-down the old models of our elders & betters. It led to a whole new school of auto-didacts, if that's not an oxymoron.

I don't know for sure, but I can't imagine dubstep, house or much of the last 20 years' of dance music came out of concert pianists.

My point is, the Dunning Kruger Effect may be a curse a lot of the time but occasionally it creates magic.

Re: BREAKING: ‘O2 WiFi’ is free hotspot network for everyone

Aleceast — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:19:03 -0000

Great idea, but I hope they don't throw out the BT openzone deal. It may be a ridiculous log-in process but BT has surprisingly good coverage.

Re: gurus of new marketing #978 : adam ant

Aleceast — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:30:02 -0000

It's a Dog Eat Dog world out there ;)

http://bit.ly/8787gL

Re: turd polishing

Aleceast — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:32:52 -0000

While it's true that you can't polish a turd, you can roll it in glitter.

Re: Give Me What I Want

Aleceast — Mon, 18 May 2009 06:46:34 -0000

Seconds before I read this post, I was reading Eaon Pritchard's blog post about a subtle but important change that massively improved his shopping experience : http://eaonpritchard.blogsp...

He talks about a familiar problem to many of us - finding a parking space - that's been resolved by implementing some advanced common sense.

Sometime all you want a company to do is to make life easier.

Re: connect with fans revisited #3

Aleceast — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:02:34 -0000

I was at one of these In Essex.

Re: not dark yet...

Aleceast — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 07:37:07 -0000

Yes, and if the police ever find where you hide it, you're gonna be in real trouble.

Re: not dark yet...

Aleceast — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:18:00 -0000

Could it be the early stages of an innovative marketing campaign for oil of ulay's new anti-aging cream?