Interesting Link: Googlism

After last week's web conference at work, I've been doing a lot of thinking about Bebo White's semantic web pep talk. While preparing to introduce Michael Angeles I did a google search to pull up details for his introduction. The third or fourth result that came back was an entry for Michael at googlism.com.

Googlism attempts to process Google search results to tell you what a search topic may be. Googlism search results are actually short sentences that may (or may not) characterize the searched subject. An example search on "Bill Richardson", the current governor of New Mexico, returns the following:

bill richardson is the united states ambassador to the united nations
bill richardson is only proposing 3 debates
bill richardson is commited to expanding health care for new mexico's families
bill richardson is currently working as a business consultant in santa fe and serves on several boards including the natural resource defense council and
bill richardson is the highest ranking hispanic in the clinton administration; and he has performed numerous invaluable international missions
bill richardson is the author of the critically acclaimed young adult novel after hamelin
bill richardson is well
bill richardson is the quintessential canadian
bill richardson is being coy with new mexico
bill richardson is putting that energy and his strong background in national security
bill richardson is a magician who spins magic with his words
bill richardson is the ninth united states secretary of energy
bill richardson is going to fire his first shot because he's panicking and because he knows his numbers are going down in the polls
bill richardson is attempting to
bill richardson is taking a pounding in congress over the latest security debacle at the los alamos weapons lab
bill richardson is on an international trip to clarify washington's stance and seek consensus
bill richardson is an independent contractor and consultant to government and industry
bill richardson is a horse's ass

Most, but certainly not all, of this stuff is correct for the Bill Richardson I was searching for. Notice the short or incomplete phrases that mean little, like "bill richardson is attempting to". I particularly like the "horse's ass" and "quintessential canadian" statements. Many would agree with the prior but I'm pretty sure that the latter statement refers to another Bill Richardson.

It's a ton of fun and I highly recommend a few searches during your next work break. My friend Andy immediately queried "satan" and "jesus" and the results were definitely entertaining.

Although Googlism was written primarily for fun, it shows an amazing amount of potential as a serious tool for adding meaning to search queries, especially when users may not know much about the topics their searching.