Owen Writes:
"Frank, just stumbled on a curious happening.
I have the Google toolbar and do many searches a day for "keyword keyword" in quotes in the google toolbar search box.
It’s getting a little late and I found my self typing "keyword keyword" in the address bar of my Firefox browser. I noticed it but figured I’d try it and see what happens.
I typed "turn by turn directions" in the address bar and it took me to mapquest. I thought that was odd so I tried another. That took me to search results then another which also took me to search results.
Now on the fourth time I tried "photo of my house" and was taken to komar.com.
After just a few more tries, this is what I got:
"plasma tv" goes to plasmatvbuyingguide.com
"gmc truck" goes to GMC.com
"csi tv" tv.com but "csi tv show" goes to search results
"cordless phone" goes to consumersearch.com
Give it a try. Does it happen in your browser?
If so, why?
Is this just a some setting in my browser?
These results do not seem to be top advertisers but I’m guessing they advertise with Google.
So, is this significant or is this nothing?
***FS*** Owen .. you’ve been Googled.. and not in the friendly happy sense like when a parent on the PTA "Google" who the other parents dropping off their kids at school are at the beginning of the school year. This is Search/Navigation shaping. Google could be shaping/limiting your view of the Internet based on your search patterns. It’s not necessarily sinister or weird.. but the more you Google, the more their 100 year cookie records the way you search and shapes results to suit you. [recent comments show it's toolbar related]
It’s good and bad.. Good in the sense that you are more apt to find results that suit you.. Bad in the sense that that you will never know what you’re missing unless you clear cookies and reinvent yourself as a new cookieless persona to "cross out what you’ve become" to "start again" .
Best clear those cookies regularly. I did.. and I feel renewed .. less data is good 
That’s not it Franky. It is mozilla’s deal with google. Keyword searches in the address bar will result in the first google result that match the keywords.
What’s happening is that your browser can’t resolve that “name” (especially with spaces and all) and is turning to Google to find the best solution. It is the same as using “I’m feeling lucky” when using http://www.google.com (it just goes to the first normal search result). If you are logged in to your Google-account, it is also possible that personalized search is playing a role to get there. Also keep in mind that the search results (and with that, the top result which is used) vary based on many parameters – eg. the datacenter used on Google’s side, language settings and location of the user.
Your browser seems to be doing the equivalent of typing the phrase into Google and clicking the I’m Feeling Lucky button. On Google, that sends you directly to the first site listed in the search results.
There is a built-in search feature on Firefox, which is part of a relationship with Google. Looks like this is part of the feature.
From memory, its a Firefox ‘feature’, due to their partnership with Google.
I can’t remember any of the details of how it works, though
Oh, Frank! That top picture is horrible!
Good morning Frank.
I don’t expect this to be published just read and delete…just a heads up FYI figured this was faster than an email
Hope you are getting used to the new house…and hopefully you built that sucker on 40 hydraulic ram columns so at the press of a button you can lift the place 10′ above a 15′ tidal surge…
Maybe I need more coffee bud…pretty sure Sequin wrote that, not Owen….
Thanks for the comment on that. Kind of creepy. Any idea how they choose which sites to show?
Doesn’t seem like the top result or top advertiser, not consistently anyway.
Dear Frank: I deleted the cookies and still got the same type of results that Owen got. I went one step further and typed solo.ca and Google took me straight to my parking page. I tried several others that I have never visited and the same thing happened.
I hope this means more direct traffic to our parked pages when people use their tool bar.
You just have to turn off Google Toolbar’s “Browse by keyword” functionality.
Now here’s the kicker, when you type “dell” as one word and hit enter, does dell pay for that since they have a premium adwords ad in the top slot for that or is it considered “I’m feeling lucky” since it’s also the first result for that keyword.
You just have to turn off Google Toolbar’s “Browse by keyword” functionality.
Now here’s the kicker, when you type “dell” as one word and hit enter, does dell pay for that since they have a premium adwords ad in the top slot for that or is it considered “I’m feeling lucky” since it’s also the first result for that keyword.
Owen,
Firefox gets paid for forwarding your query onto Google, who then forward you to the #1 listing for whatever you typed – same as hitting the “I’m felling lucky” button at Google.
“”That’s not it Franky. It is mozilla’s deal with google. Keyword searches in the address bar will result in the first google result that match the keywords.”"
“”Firefox gets paid for forwarding your query onto Google, who then forward you to the #1 listing for whatever you typed”"
___
These are correct answers…after you type ‘cordless phone’ into FF…just type it into G search….results are from rhe #1 spot.
No big mystery.
This ‘silent’ battle for contol of this type traffic has being going on for the last 2 years and has been really heating up the last 12 months.
ISP’s now are trying to control this ‘traffic’ BEFORE, Google,Microsoft or Firefox gets to.
Its going to get a lot more ‘wild’.
Peace!
Dan
That was in fact Sequin who wrote that. I simply sent it to Frank alerting him to the fact there was discussion on Rick’s board about his favor topic and HE might want to log in and write about it.
It was Slavik who concluded: “this is how google has been hijacking traffic with their toolbar results go to the first site in their index” which is what made me think of Frank and his previous revelations.
I read on a blog that Mozilla gets $1 for every type-in that goes to google regardless of whether Google gets paid for the result. And that $70million in revenue was earned by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. There’s some debate over that here:
http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/?p=182
and here:
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3624399
As for the photo, I wish I could get that OFF my blog and get the right one up. There was a joke played on me by people at the photo server (my buddies from Xerox-Parc) and I can’t get a human being to correct it.
I will say this the same thing has happened to me. I blogged about this recently. For example with my Caribbean website http://www.DancehallSoca.com. I typed in my browser Dancehall and Soca. My site came right up. This is great for me but I think this only happens with the site that is at #1 for that search. I did not pay anybody for that.
Nicky @ Informtainment.com
I agree that it’s not magic, just google results. Try “number of horns on a unicorn” as search phrase. Google has lots of facts like this as well as a calculator. Try “2 + 2″ and guess the result.