Incidentally that last is a quote from Voltaire; interesting that of all the things he said that one looms large in Google search right now.
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A Historical Fantasy
An Archaeological Mystery
A Historical Fantasy
An Archaeological Mystery
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About Me
- John
- John Bedell is an archaeologist, historian, and father of five living in Maryland. He has self-published two novels and is writing a third.
1 comment:
Should I be more worried about being considered useless, or being considered a gossip who teases the dead?
Don't pay too much mind to The Algorithm. It has a ton of biases and flaws that people frequently exploit, both intentionally and not. Google themselves admit the autocorrect suggestions are not based solely on popularity of a search term, and results can and do vary wildly with region, language, and other unknown factors.
That said, even assuming accuracy based on usage, there are plenty of unseen factors that can skew things. A trending meme can cause an ironic or sarcastic phrase to spike; bot swarms can be programmed to perform queries to inflate search numbers for nefarious reasons; et cetera.
Also, a given phrase that appears as the top suggestion might simply be the most common entry of a certain subset of phrases that are all structured in the specific same way. For example, "Historians are..." suggests "useless", but "Are historians..." suggests "scientists", and "useless historians..." doesn't even provide a recommendation. How you phrase your search matters drastically, and the "Top Result" drawn from an autocomplete of an unusually phrased querry can mislead you as to just how prevalent the search actually is.
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