I was sucked into doing this after accidentally searching for my own name, without quotation marks, on Google. I was astonished to see that I am on the first page.
I can think of no good reason for this, other than the fact that I’ve run a blog for a number of years and that it is hosted with Google themselves. I’ve done a few things here and there, but nothing to really imprint my (absurdly common) name on the collective consciousness of the world.
search: david charles
Fascinated, I looked on the other big search engines to see if this was indeed a case of Google favouritism. Here are the results:
Google (84% share of the search market):
10th result. Bottom of the 1st page.
Yahoo (6%):
91st result. Top of the 10th page. That’s more like the mediocrity I was expecting!
Baidu (Chinese language search engine. 4%):
Nowhere to be found in the first 25 pages, or 250 results. Why not? Have I been censored?
Bing (4%):
42nd result. 5th page. Solid mediocrity.
Ask (<1%):
9th result. 1st page. Suspiciously similar to the Google results. No complaints.
Aol (<1%):
10th result. 1st page. Have you been copying at the back there?
O Vanity, you spoil me!
Where it really gets interesting (for me) is when you start throwing in random words. Because I’ve written quite a lot over the years, on quite a number of diverse subjects, random words send me catapulting up the league table.
david charles travel
- #1 and #2 on Google.
- #6 on Yahoo!
david charles supermarket
- #1 – #3 on Google.
- #3 and #4 on Yahoo!
david charles cycling
- #1 – #4 on Google.
- #3, #5 and #7 on Yahoo!
david charles palestine
- #1 – #6 on Google.
- #1 on Yahoo!
david charles hitch hiking
- 7 of the top 8 on Google. Only Larry David at #6 keeps me from a Beatles-esque domination of the charts.
- #1, #2 and #9 on Yahoo!
Now those are not really that random. I have written quite extensively about those topics. You would expect me to score pretty highly on them. But what about these?
david charles lights
- #3 – #5 on Google.
david charles massive
- #2 on Google.
david charles teenager
- #5 on Google.
Yahoo!, however, dismisses my name from it’s pages. It does seem to be better at picking up relevance, dare I say it.
And yes, that last one there was a random word from: http://watchout4snakes.com/creativitytools/RandomWord/RandomWordPlus.aspx
You may well be aware of all this, however…
AOL is powered by Google
Ask is powered by an unnamed third party (hmmm, I can think of a name beginning with G)
Yahoo was independent but is ‘transitioning’ to Bing power
Bing is independent.
Google is Google.
And as for Baidu, trying injecting a bit more Chinese into your site?
(and please find away of sorting out the comments not working thing – there are people desperate to comment!)
I know the comments things is a right pain in the arse! I have no idea how to sort it out though. It’s a blogger thing, as far as I can tell. Grr.
…But it seems to be working for me right now. I had my suspicions that Aol and Ask were fairly pointless. Better get some Bing thing into my life.
Ok, i had a go at this.
According to various internet sources there are 2 people with my name in the UK (1 of which is me I assume) and according another source there are just 12 in the world. That is not many, that is very uncommon.
However, as I am well aware, one of those 12 just happens to be a Hollywood actor (mainly voices for animated films, as it goes) so he had the search engines sewn up.
I can live with that. So when I had a look a few years ago I was able to comfort myself by appending “Tennis” (as I play a bit and know that is about the only thing that will ever get me published dans le net) to the search term, and BOOM! there I was.
I have just tried again, and guess who did a voice for Bee Movie, playing the part of… “a vain tennis player”. Evidently I no longer exist.