+1. Case in point: Today I was thinking about a problem: "Maybe I need a something like a "reduce-map" function here; maybe that would be the right metaphore for what I want the program to do here." I wanted to know whether this thought had any currency, so I googled program "reduce-map":
If enough people search for it, Google picks up on it and adds in some sort of override to the no-punctuation rule. This is why "C#" and "F#" return different results from "C" and "F", but "Z#" gets no such benefit. Other times the exceptions apply to broad patterns of letters, since any single letter with "++" appended will give specific results even if it's not the name of anything (try "y++"), but + signs are in general ignored ("+++what--is+happening--" gives the same results as "what is happening").
Sigur Ros put out an album a few years back titled (). Yes, an empty pair of parentheses. It took me forever to even find a store that carried it because searching web sites couldn't hope to get any result.
I did eventually find a copy, though.
Edit: Hah, zero Google results, period! How's that for un-Googlable?
"Pick a band name that no one else has so that it will show up first in google ... Pick an album name that is a made up word that no1 has ever even typed ... Name a song after some phrase that will get you accidental google hits."
These 3 things together make no sense to me. On the one hand it's suggesting to pick unique band names and albums, and then suggesting to pick regular phrases for songs that might get "accidental" hits.
If there's a benefit to getting said accidental hits, wouldn't this work for a band name? Surely Grizzly Bear would benefit from this? And I don't htink it's a real issue if your band name isn't top of the list because you are competing with 'real bears'; people aren't going to give up finding you if you are 4th on the list, or they have to type "grizzly bear band" in the search instead.
You forgot the word "new" in your second search, which is why you get different results. Those characters are being entirely ignored. You get the exact same results by searching for "Y new album"
It's somewhat shocking that people write like this nearly everywhere. Tech sites and even many astronomy sites are no exception (e.g., Wired or Astronomy Now).
I think it's more generational than anything, as far as informal discussion goes. I don't use it, but I sometimes get called out by people older than me for using other abbreviations, like the typical internet stuff (fwiw, imo, etc.). I've even been criticized for using contractions in some settings, even though nobody under 40 cares about that (fortunately, consensus even in academic writing is moving towards "contractions are ok"). Not sure "n e 1" will go that way, but I can't say I care that much either way.
It's basically the bit.ly links of English: annoying in some ways that they didn't just write the normal thing out, and also annoying that stupid length restrictions like those of SMS and Twitter are encouraging both of them, but I'll live.
You know what's worse than that? People using 'nyt' for the word 'night' (ie. 'last nyt'). At least n-e-1 actually phonetically resolves to something sounding like 'anyone'. In my mind, 'nyt' would be 'nit' (or maybe nyit?).
On the other hand, if you have to include the spaces, 'n e 1' only saves you one keypress, so its also pretty damn stupid.
It is Hipster Runoff we're talking about and using "textspeak" is part of the blog's "brand" as well as abusing quotation marks. It not something you would expect to find on HN's frontpage but it is the number one alternative music blog for a reason.
I was looking at issues with integrating Amazon's products into my job's website a few years ago and I ran into an album called: [+++++]. I'd link to it, but Amazon's search can't find it and I don't remember what category it was under
On the plus side - an artist can be sure that piracy of their badly named album will also be low, since people won't be able to find it in the torrent search engines as well.
"Can M.I.A. call the Google CEO and tell him to ‘index her shit’?
Does n e 1 know how google works? Is there like an old guy who has to go through a file cabinet 2 find results for you every time you search for something?"
So the author knows what SEO stands for, but doesn't know the answer to this? Please. My impression is that this guy is intentionally trying to downplay his knowledge to avoid being labeled a "computer geek" by the hipsters in his audience.
I don't think this will have much impact on sales. You can just search for M.I.A.
It's because mysql_real_escape_string, which many sites use, escapes all \ with /\. So on many sites (not nessessarily Google, you will actually be searching for //\//\//\Y//\?
Searching for "plus slash minus" does bring up correct results. So does searching "chk chk chk" (i don't know why people call them this, I haven't heard of the band until today, but amazon told me this was a related search so I tried it on google).
more than likely people will just search for: MIA maya album.
I think something similar happened with a few smaller bands back in the p2p days who tried to make themselves 'unsearchable' and therefore 'unpirateable'. Pirates always find a way.
1. Poisoned 2. Fast Track 3. Grokster 4. Morpheus 5. Bit Torrent 6. Audio Galaxy 7. G2 8. Soul Seek 9. Gifted 10. Limewire 11. Overnet