6 ms·

\" is ungoogleable

29 points by sublemonic 16y ago

slapshot 16y ago
I'll give $20 to the first AMAZON-listed band with a SQL-injection album name. "'); DROP TABLE ARTISTS" (Yes, #327)
pook 16y ago
Chrome's Translate feature has let me down. What language is the comment thread in?
jessor 16y ago
It's quite a problem. I'd really appreciate if google could just let me search for strings i put in quotes exactly the way they are. Recently I wanted to google stuff about the windowmanager i3. It was quite difficult, even with queries like "i3 windowmanger".
- unwind 16y ago
  Uh ... I just tried it, but without the (hopefully typo:ed) misspelling you cited. I get two hits, and the second goes to http://i3.zekjur.net/ http://i3.zekjur.net/ which seems to be the home of i3. This is the search I used: http://www.google.se/search?q=%22i3+windowmanager%22 http://www.google.se/search?q=%22i3+windowmanager%22. So that seems to be working fine, at least now.
- dhs 16y ago
  +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": http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=program+%22reduce-map%22 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=program+%22reduce-m... And got back a slew of map-reduce tutorials. Still don't know whether that "reduce-map" idea is a dead end.
- david 16y ago
  yeah, it's pretty hard to google anything nowadays without resorting to plus signs everywhere.
leftnode 16y ago
In the long run, this probably won't matter, people will just search for "mia new album" and find it just fine.
- tom_ilsinszki 16y ago
  At best it will not matter that much, but it will not help spreading the news. How will people search for the album after the next one comes out? "Mia album previous" I think this is when cool gets in the way of usability. (On the other hand, I am talking about the album right now, so if this was a marketing stunt, to get geeks talk about M.I.A, than it worked)
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  5th hit
- rbrcurtis 16y ago
  or mia maya
anedisi 16y ago
i'll google my new album. upss.
DeusExMachina 16y ago
Does n e 1 know how google works? It took me a while to understand that "n e 1" is actually "anyone".
- ErrantX 16y ago
  We are spoiled here on HN. Sometimes this "txt spk" makes my eyes bleed :(
  - coderdude 16y ago
    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).
    - _delirium 16y ago
      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.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- mambodog 16y ago
  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.
mmelin 16y ago
"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.
- ottbot 16y ago
  I don't think this is his intention at all. You can't take HRO remotely seriously. This is simply the tone/style of his writing, read more of the blog - it's all just a joke/satire.
lini 16y ago
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.
pmiller2 16y ago
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?
- jjs 16y ago
  * (latest-album 'sigur-ros) NIL
- mambodog 16y ago
  You should have tried googling for 'sigur ros parentheses'.
  - shawndumas 16y ago
    ^ google-fu -- red sash awarded! eighteen terms of googshu completed.
- robotron 16y ago
  You should have created a news article on it that took over the blogogogosphere.
tom_ilsinszki 16y ago
M.I.A.'s album is also "untorrentable".
- laktek 16y ago
  Really? That made me LOL!
tzury 16y ago
However, '"/ / / Y/" album' does work as well as "/\/\/\Y/\ new album" seems like "\" of each "\/" is treated as escape character http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=/\/\/\Y/\+new+album http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=/\/\/\Y/\+new+album and http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=/+/+/+Y/+album http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=/+/+/+Y/+album
- sounddust 16y ago
  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"
matthias 16y ago
this reminds me of Super Discount 2 released by Etienne De Crecy in 2004. He named each track after a p2p client, thereby search-obscuring the titles. 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
ddrager 16y ago
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//\?
heyitsnick 16y ago
"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.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
goodside 16y ago
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").
lwhi 16y ago
I reckon this is clever. It makes it far more difficult to illegally share the album.
JeffJenkins 16y ago
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
miguelpais 16y ago
It should be googleable on this version of google though: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-hacker http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-hacker
kree10 16y ago
I can think of a couple bands with names that give zero results on google: "!!!" and "+/-". Though ungoogleable, I see they are "amazonable".
- harshpotatoes 16y ago
  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).
harshpotatoes 16y ago
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.
- harshpotatoes 16y ago
  Case in point: searching for "plus slash minus" to find the band "+/-"

29 points by sublemonic 16y ago

slapshot 16y ago

I'll give $20 to the first AMAZON-listed band with a SQL-injection album name. "'); DROP TABLE ARTISTS" (Yes, #327)

pook 16y ago

Chrome's Translate feature has let me down. What language is the comment thread in?

jessor 16y ago

It's quite a problem. I'd really appreciate if google could just let me search for strings i put in quotes exactly the way they are. Recently I wanted to google stuff about the windowmanager i3. It was quite difficult, even with queries like "i3 windowmanger".

unwind 16y ago
Uh ... I just tried it, but without the (hopefully typo:ed) misspelling you cited. I get two hits, and the second goes to http://i3.zekjur.net/ http://i3.zekjur.net/ which seems to be the home of i3. This is the search I used: http://www.google.se/search?q=%22i3+windowmanager%22 http://www.google.se/search?q=%22i3+windowmanager%22. So that seems to be working fine, at least now.
dhs 16y ago
+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": http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=program+%22reduce-map%22 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=program+%22reduce-m... And got back a slew of map-reduce tutorials. Still don't know whether that "reduce-map" idea is a dead end.
david 16y ago
yeah, it's pretty hard to google anything nowadays without resorting to plus signs everywhere.

leftnode 16y ago

In the long run, this probably won't matter, people will just search for "mia new album" and find it just fine.

tom_ilsinszki 16y ago
At best it will not matter that much, but it will not help spreading the news. How will people search for the album after the next one comes out? "Mia album previous" I think this is when cool gets in the way of usability. (On the other hand, I am talking about the album right now, so if this was a marketing stunt, to get geeks talk about M.I.A, than it worked)
JoeAltmaier 16y ago
5th hit
rbrcurtis 16y ago
or mia maya

anedisi 16y ago

i'll google my new album. upss.

DeusExMachina 16y ago

Does n e 1 know how google works? It took me a while to understand that "n e 1" is actually "anyone".

ErrantX 16y ago
We are spoiled here on HN. Sometimes this "txt spk" makes my eyes bleed :(
- coderdude 16y ago
  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).
  - _delirium 16y ago
    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.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
mambodog 16y ago
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.

mmelin 16y ago

"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.

ottbot 16y ago
I don't think this is his intention at all. You can't take HRO remotely seriously. This is simply the tone/style of his writing, read more of the blog - it's all just a joke/satire.

lini 16y ago

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.

pmiller2 16y ago

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?

jjs 16y ago
* (latest-album 'sigur-ros) NIL
mambodog 16y ago
You should have tried googling for 'sigur ros parentheses'.
- shawndumas 16y ago
  ^ google-fu -- red sash awarded! eighteen terms of googshu completed.
robotron 16y ago
You should have created a news article on it that took over the blogogogosphere.

tom_ilsinszki 16y ago

M.I.A.'s album is also "untorrentable".

laktek 16y ago
Really? That made me LOL!

tzury 16y ago

However, '"/ / / Y/" album' does work as well as "/\/\/\Y/\ new album" seems like "\" of each "\/" is treated as escape character http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=/\/\/\Y/\+new+album http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=/\/\/\Y/\+new+album and http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=/+/+/+Y/+album http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=/+/+/+Y/+album

sounddust 16y ago
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"

matthias 16y ago

this reminds me of Super Discount 2 released by Etienne De Crecy in 2004. He named each track after a p2p client, thereby search-obscuring the titles. 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

ddrager 16y ago

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//\?

heyitsnick 16y ago

"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.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

goodside 16y ago

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").

lwhi 16y ago

I reckon this is clever. It makes it far more difficult to illegally share the album.

JeffJenkins 16y ago

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

miguelpais 16y ago

It should be googleable on this version of google though: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-hacker http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-hacker

kree10 16y ago

I can think of a couple bands with names that give zero results on google: "!!!" and "+/-". Though ungoogleable, I see they are "amazonable".

harshpotatoes 16y ago
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).

harshpotatoes 16y ago

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.

harshpotatoes 16y ago
Case in point: searching for "plus slash minus" to find the band "+/-"