Brrreeeport crazy and more search engine lies
Damn, brrrreeeport is the top search on Technorati and there are 420 posts there. Wacky.
What’s an even better deal is that Google says there are now about 14,000 results. What the f___? I HATE the lies that are going on on search engines. Quick: click through and tell me how many entries there really are. Hint: it isn’t 14,000. Funny that Google’s blog search can only find 382.
MSN says there are 1,369 results. Yahoo says there are 1,010 results.
Feedster is back online with 454 results (they were doing server upgrades when I did my first tests).
Anyway, it’s very bbbrrrrryyyy here in Keystone, CO.
Does anyone believe any of these numbers? How can we verify any of them?
Update: Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati, looked into it more.
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February 15th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
Well, we could count them. I have a brrreeeport post, so that makes one. Who’s next?
February 15th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
Robert, I just posted about this, including timed screenshots, and now I’ve just seen your post. Here’s a link:
http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000421.html
Dave
February 15th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
Oh and BTW, you really need to click on through to the end of GBS’ results to get the exact number, which is currently 337, see here:
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=brrreeeport&ie=UTF-8&filter=0&sa=N&start=360
Dave
February 15th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
[...] For those not in the loop, Robert Scoble of the Scobleizer blog suggested a couple of days ago that everyone put “brrreeeport” in there blog, to test out search engines and blog trackers like technorati. Well it was all fun and games, but today google shut down any queries for brrreeeport and showed zero results [...]
February 15th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
Also, Feedster is currently claiming 495 posts, but when you click through, you only get to see 361 posts.
http://www.feedster.com/search/brrreeeport/pg37
Dave
February 15th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
Well, it is interesting. I just queried Feedster with above link. It shows 2 different counts (470 and 490) when I navigate thru’ different page numbers.
It is hard to know the accurate count, I guess.
I hope the search engines won’t count the number of occurrences of the word “brrreeeport” in each post as opposed to number of blog posts. okay, this shows i don’t know about how search engines work. :)
February 15th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Thanks Robert for this little foray into numbers!
February 16th, 2006 at 12:44 am
I’m not sure what is going on over at the google labs but they must have been taking crack cause there sure isn’t 22300 pages about brrreeeport in this listing, http://72.14.207.104/search?hl=en&q=brrreeeport&btnG=Google+Search Not yet atleast
February 16th, 2006 at 1:54 am
brrreeeport Report
Derzeit geht - angeheizt vom Scobleizer - der brrreeeport um. Was sich anhört wie ein auf Grund übermässigen Tabakkonsums guttural erbrochener Paarungslaut, soll einen Versuch mit dem Hintergrund einer statistischen Erhebung darstellen. Oder anders…
February 16th, 2006 at 2:04 am
Looking at this objectively though….
Is it not possible there *could* be 14 or 15 thousand pages containing “brrreeeport” on the web… given the exponential/self-feeding nature of the brrreeeport phenomenon???
Perhaps try the experiment again - but with a much more cumbersome term - say 50 characters… It might work better because, for one, people will be less enthusiastic the second time around, and, secondly, there is not such a “phenomenon” and “new meme” to talk about meaning fewer posts and more controlled spread of the new term.
February 16th, 2006 at 2:32 am
Lisa: no, it’s not possible.
And, if it were, then SOMEONE would be able to show that many pages.
It’s very easy to verify, just click through the search engines until you can’t click “next” anymore.
February 16th, 2006 at 3:25 am
The german brrreeeport report
Robert Scoble testet Suchmaschinen-Performances. Deshalb spreadet er in der Blogwelt den Aufruf die Phrase “brrreeeport report” in die postings mit aufzunehmen. Gern geschehen. Stand jetzt: Google Blogsearch (german): 6 for ‘brrreeeport’ Technorati…
February 16th, 2006 at 3:50 am
[...] 2006-02-16 Update: 最新的 report 出爐，看來太聰明的 search engine 反而會造成困擾 (自動幫你找類似的網頁，因為 brrreeeport 看起來像是錯字) 此外，這代表 Technorati 的 blog 關鍵字搜尋較精準嗎 ? ;-) var blogTool = “WordPress”; var blogURL = “http://blog.23corner.com”; var blogTitle = “二三街角”; var postURL = “http://blog.23corner.com/2006/02/15/1264/”; var postTitle = “搜尋引擎測試”; var commentAuthorFieldName = “author”; var commentAuthorLoggedIn = false; var commentFormID = “commentform”; var commentTextFieldName = “comment”; var commentButtonName = “submit”; [...]
February 16th, 2006 at 3:55 am
Why do you care so much about accurate results.
No search engine out there gives totally accurate results all the time. for many reasons, mostly relating to optimizations.
Even technorati (correct me Sifry if I am wrong) reports estimates only for search queries with many results (lets say 10K+).. terms like ‘google search blog for example, giving 135,486 results .
February 16th, 2006 at 4:47 am
I’m with Ron, it’s less important to me who is accurate with how many times brrreeeport comes up than who comes up with the original and the best links on the first page.
On a side note: while Fred’s link works for me, anytime I do a search starting on the Google homepage, there are NO records for brrreeeport. Anyone else seeing this?
February 16th, 2006 at 5:08 am
Google currently has 000. A big golden zero. Numbers do change fast around here..
February 16th, 2006 at 5:23 am
I think it’s important and I know there are more than 482 posts that contain the word “Brrreeeport” out of 28 million blogs. (both numbers from Technorati) Why it’s important is that alot of us, like me use search engines all the time and if they are not accurate what are we missing is my question. I think the key to this is to find out why blogs didn’t make the technoriti or GBS search. Each of us who did should note if ours showed up or not. Once some of the blogs that did not show up are found? Might hold some clues. Might not but? For the record? I have two posts that show up in Technorati, and one that shows up in GBS.
February 16th, 2006 at 5:28 am
Search Scoble on Google…looks like all posts relating to brrreeeport are gone.
February 16th, 2006 at 6:04 am
Google is still in denial about brrreeeport being spelled properly. I just received the following email:
Hello,
Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords. I recently reviewed your AdWords account and found that either one or more of your ads and/or keywords violates our guidelines or that you filed an exception request from one or more of our policies and it is awaiting a response. Below, please find my report on your account status.
———————————————-
Campaign: ‘brrreeeport,’ Ad Group: ‘brrreeeport’
———————————————-
AD TEXT:
Got brrreeeport?
If it’s not on your blog
it should be!
http://www.stighammond.com
Ad Status: Suspended - Pending Revision
Ad Issue(s): Spelling
~~~~~~~~~
DENIED EXCEPTION(S):
After careful consideration, we are unable to grant the exception requests listed below. Your ad or keyword is no longer active. For your convenience, I’ve included your original message to us directly below each policy violation.
Spelling: misspelled: brrreeeport?, language: en
Your explanation: Brrreeeport is a term coined by Microsoft’s Robert Scoble of the blog Scobelizer
(http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/02/13/the-brrreeeport-report/) and already has more than 156 mentions on Google Blog search.
SUGGESTIONS:
-> Ad Text: You have one or more words spelled incorrectly within your ad text.
Current: “brrreeeport”
February 16th, 2006 at 6:07 am
Like others have said, it’s not the counts that count, but the links that end up being provided.
Both MSN and Google show scobleizer.wordpress.com as the top link (excluding the ’special’ Technorati links for Google). How much more accurate can you get?
Imagine you went to the library and asked the librarian for a book on Word War 2. Which would you prefer?
a) “Here you are… this book here has everything you could ever want to know about WWII and has been rated as worthy by thousands of readers”; or
b) “Well you know… we do have 11,485,927 references to WWII in books spread throughout the library. That’s an exact count, so…”
As far as I’m concerned, answer (b) is absolutely useless.
In theory, a perfectly accurate search engine would only ever need to give you 1 answer, as a perfectly accurate search engine would know *exactly* what you wanted!
February 16th, 2006 at 7:32 am
[...] Scoble has been giving updates on the progress of his little brrreeeport search engine test. The latest is here. He’s a little mad about how the big search engines are lying about how many results they find. I can’t say that I blame him. My own little test shows that Google finds 12,300 results for the term thatedeguy. I must be more prolific than I thought. Of course, Google only allows me to see 984 of those results. [...]
February 16th, 2006 at 7:34 am
Lisa, I can see your point as a blogger, that you would want to make sure you are being included in all searches. I am coming from the opposite spectrum, the professional researcher. I want a few very relevant results and as little echo as possible near the top.
February 16th, 2006 at 7:43 am
[...] Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger » Brrreeeport crazy and more search engine lies Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger » Brrreeeport report [...]
February 16th, 2006 at 8:01 am
Will brrreeeport Change how web 3.0 works?
Robert Scoble is doing some crazy thing with the term brrreeeport. I am not sure why but probably just for the fun of creating a stupid word that gets virus like spread throughout the blogosphere. Is this the future of…
February 16th, 2006 at 8:17 am
Maybe 14000 webpages are skimming the brrreeeport entries onto their webpage to increase their hits and revenue. I know I’ve had comments on slashdot that somehow end up showing up on these kind of sites. And, I’m a real nobody online.
I does seem silly to show that big of a number if it is not accurate. Either say “approximately”, or give the real number, or don’t give any number at all.
February 16th, 2006 at 8:18 am
http://brrrreeeport.blogspot.com/
Now there are blogs about the topic!
February 16th, 2006 at 8:19 am
Is Google Preventing Analysis of Their Search Resu
Now I don’t know the full story, but Google is apparently no longer serving up any results for the term “brrreeeport”. Is the DNE (Do No Evil) Gang worried about Robert’s findings surrounding the accuracy of their reported search results?
February 16th, 2006 at 8:22 am
A normal google.com search claims 22,300 results, but the actual number is 364. If you go to page 37 (as of 8:20am PST) you’ll see this:
“In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 364 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.”
When you run with the omitted results included, you’ll see that most of the omitted results show exactly the same content — its only the URL that is slightly different. Maybe if G and the other search engines would show actual search result numbers instead of clearly misleading ones I wouldn’t have to suffer through yet another obnoxious news report where the reporter says something like “Google found 14 gazillion hits for ‘xyz’” when I know that is just fiction.
February 16th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Robert, I don’t know whether you saw my post — I left a little goodie for you.
Best,
-A-
February 16th, 2006 at 10:04 am
Have Mercy, for they know not what they do. (I hafta keep telling myself that).
Glad you found a hobby tho.
February 16th, 2006 at 10:50 am
[...] Google has fallen from its high horse and is still receiving negative press regarding its move into China. And now, someone is testing Google against other search engines (like Technorati) with a made up word, “Brrreeeport”. The idea is to track the number of times Google finds this completely new word compared to the other search engines. I’m not exactly sure what this will prove, but it’s fast becoming a phenomenon amongst bloggers, who have written over 500 entries about it over the last couple of days. Are we above jumping on the bandwagon in hopes of greater visibility for our blog? Of course. Not. And so, a t-shirt. [...]
February 16th, 2006 at 11:23 am
Well one possibility with the results in Google vs Technorati is that Technorati sucks as far as recognizing their own pings and Google seems to pull posts from everywhere. My post that I tracked back here as no. 24 in the comments may be here and in googles blog search but Technorati seems to always ignore all of my pings from all of my weblogs even though I have claimed them and not recieved an error in the pinging of my Movable Type blogs.
Maybe is the pinging worked better the Google and Technorati numbers would be the same.
February 16th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
[...] First may I thank all the people who told me that I had not been left out of the brrrreeeport party. So nice to know. I guess my sulk was premature. Probably a feature of living with two 5 year olds! [...]
February 16th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
Most likely, the strange result count is due to statistical sampling methods used to quickly _estimate_ the number of matches to a search. Obviously, in this case the sampling method broke down rather spectacularly.
February 16th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
I’m sorry, what exactly is Brrreeeport means?
February 16th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
[...] Mr. Scoble has a good reason make me do this. [...]
February 16th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
[...] He has done some other posts on the topic since then (here and here and here and here), and now WebProWorld says this: Scoble’s snarky experiment was in response to the notion of the supposed Blog Club, where A-list bloggers only link to each other and thereby keeping lesser-known bloggers out of the loop of recognition in typical Critical Theory style. [...]
February 16th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
[...] http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/02/15/brrreeeport-crazy-and-more-search-engine-lies/ [...]
February 16th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Although it doesn’t account for all of it, I was under the impression that Google’s total was inflated because the count shown wasn’t pages, but occurrences (many “pages” have the term multiple times).
I don’t believe the lower numbers though. Just about every single blog that mentions it thus accounts for multiple mentions on the main page, the individual archive page and perhaps more uf there are aggregate archives of various types. The number simply CAN’T be in the
February 16th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
22,000 @22:42 UCT - This is becoming so unbelievable….
February 16th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
I yelled out Brrreeeport
Out for a smoke on the back yard porch I yelled, “Brreeeport”!And back from over the fence came a loud retort, a report,
February 16th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
[...] Scoble poses an interesting comment about the discrepancy of return result numbers and actual results: [...]
February 16th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Robert, here’s my overview of the Brrreeeport:
http://www.feedster.com/blog/2006/02/16/feedsters-brrreeeport-report/
February 16th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
What the Heck is BBBRRRRRYYYYY?
Scoble is calling the search engines on their total counts…
February 16th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
[...] http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/02/15/brrreeeport-crazy-and-more-search-engine-lies/ [...]
February 16th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
[...] http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/02/15/brrreeeport-crazy-and-more-search-engine-lies/ [...]
February 16th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
being a lay person i have no clue what you guys are doing, but it seems real important, and real beneficial, so keep at it.
i remember a few years ago, google went from 4.5 billion web pages to 8.9 billion. how did they double?
NO EXPLANATAION.
February 16th, 2006 at 6:58 pm
brrreeeport Mantra
Brrreeeport, a comfort to me, during the full moon, when restless, my mind feverishly roams the night. Brrreeeport, s
February 16th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
I am a total nobody in blogsphere but i find this very interesting!
February 16th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
[...] http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/02/15/brrreeeport-crazy-and-more-search-engine-lies/ [...]
February 17th, 2006 at 4:51 am
[...] Und sonst? Der Brrreeeport klettert in den Indizes nach und nach weiter nach oben – und vermittelt so ein Bild von der Qualität der verschiedenen (Blog-)Suchmaschinen. Bleibt also auch weiterhin interessant. Bei den Blogsuchmaschinen selbst tut sich ein bisschen: Technorati hat eine Gewichtungsoption eingeführt. Ob das sinnvoll ist oder sich dann nur die eh schon großen Blogs selbst verstärken und damit nur eine neue Hierarchie eingeführt wird, da bin ich mir noch nicht ganz sicher… Falk Lüke | 13:41 [...]
February 17th, 2006 at 8:46 am
[...] Joining in the brrreeeport posting fun started by Scoble. A few days ago he posted about the misleading numbers search engines (such as Google) seem to show. [...]
February 17th, 2006 at 11:01 am
Great idea - fantastic for you, and everyone else.
e.g.
http://www.brrreeeport.co.uk
Will the epidemic completely take off or it will
it fizzle away?
February 17th, 2006 at 11:16 am
[...] power for good. So how about it? Permanent Link | Del.icio.us | Technorati | Digg | Slashdot [...]
February 17th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
brrreeeport in my life, and my wife
I was sitting at a red light in front of Whole Foods MarketMusing on my tough luckWhen my mind started chanting and m
February 18th, 2006 at 10:42 am
Accurate Search Counts Matter
Search engines are used for more than searching for shoes and various other necessities Suzie B. Average may be looking for. Accurate search counts, not just accurate results, should be a part of the overall package of search engines.
…
February 18th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
Just a question, but what can you use a reliable search count for? Unless you know that EVERY page is indexed, or know exactly what percentage of pages are / are not indexed, what use is an accurate count?
I daresay you can’t do any statistics with it, because you don’t know your ’search domain’.
What use is it, really?
February 18th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Breememe, aka The Battle of the Memetrackers
OK, I am totally hooked on two memetrackers, memeorandum and TailRank. I can’t decide which one is better. There are three qualities I look for in a good memetracker: diversity of sources, speed and design. TailRank wins points for finding
February 18th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
[...] This is as a follow up to Robert Scobles’ test of search engines with the Brrreeeport test. [...]
February 18th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
Brrreeeport, Breememe and Bruuuhaha…
This is my most meaningless post. Ever. Just helping Steve Rubel to construct a little meme-tracker-race.
Taking a clue from Scoble’s Brrreeereport test for web/blog search, he now wants to compare Memeorandum and Tailrank by counting Bree…
February 18th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
[...] Steve Rubel, over at Micropersuasion, has taken Scbole’s recent brrreeereport test a step further. Rubel explains it as follows: [...]
February 19th, 2006 at 10:08 am
You missed the obvious answer here.
The problem with the main search index counts vs blog searches is that a single post will be indexed multiple times and therefore count multiple times because it’ll have a cache of the front page, the post itself, the comments link, the “recent posts” link on every post that has that side bar, the archive, the rss feed etc.
As of 1pm Sunday, Google has 56,100, and Yahoo 78,900, MSN shows 45,379.
February 19th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
[...] Brrreeeport! No idea what it is? Here Here Here Here or Here [...]
February 21st, 2006 at 5:58 pm
I posted the day after. still not showing up. Then again My blog started about two weeks ago. So I wait for the search engines to say. But I got friends, family and some strangers appearing.
Keep posting. You and Dave are one and two in my reading lists
February 23rd, 2006 at 9:48 am
[...] Technorati returned 487 results for the fictitious word, pointing searchers to Z-list blogs that otherwise may have never been found. It was placed in the #1 slot for most popular search, even out ranking Dick Cheney’s hunting accident. Oh, but wait until you hear the Rest of The Story! Within two day’s time “brrreeeport” hit Google with over 452 results! At one time Google claimed over 14,000 results and some report as many as 50,000 results where claimed by Google. Now here’s the thing (and the peek up the skirt), when Scoble actually scrolled through and counted the results, he came up with only 382 (hardly 50,000). He says that this is an example of the “lies that are going on on the search engines”. MSN returned 1,369 and Yahoo returned 1,010. After blushing and wiping the egg off of their faces, a few days later Google returned only 190 results for “brrreeeport”, with MSN returning 221, and Yahoo still returning 2,130. Gee, I know we can’t trust our politians, but come on, this is the search engines. Was this an honest mistake or were the results manipulated in some brrreeeport mysterious way? [...]
November 7th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
Dave
Interesting topic… I’m working in this industry myself and I don’t agree about this in 100%, but I added your page to my bookmarks and hope to see more interesting articles in the future