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Does Face Always Mean Facebook?

By Ciaran | December 19th, 2007 | Facebook, Google, Firefox

Here’s one for you all to ponder (or maybe not, maybe I’m overreacting).

If you have Firefox as your browser, type the word face into the address bar and hit enter. You will find yourself automatically redirected to Facebook. Why? Because Google assumes that if you type face into your address bar, then you wanted to end up at the social networking site.

This is simply an extreme example of Google’s ‘did you mean’ functionality, but one which I think poses some interesting questions (which I don’t necessarily have the answers to):

  • How many people must have typed in face and then ended up going to Facebook for Google to ‘decide’ that’s what all people doing this wanted to do?
  • How many people actually do type face into their address bar every day?
  • Could Google stop Facebook’s growth by amending this redirect?
  • Does any of this really matter?

Answers on a postcatrd to the usual address.

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Comments

  1. By Jane | December 19th, 2007 at 3:02 pm

    It always annoys me a bit when I lazily type something into Firefox’s address bar and it takes me to what it thinks I want, rather than search results :)

    However, arriving at Facebook by accident probably wouldn’t piss me off too much. “Ah! Well, seeing I’m here, I may as well stick around for a while…”

  2. By David Fiske | December 19th, 2007 at 5:32 pm

    Leg, Arm, Foot and Head go to search pages. Bizarrely, Hand goes to Wikipedia.

    That’s 2 minutes I’ll never get back! :-)

  3. By Dr. Pete | December 19th, 2007 at 7:01 pm

    So, apparently my lobbying effort to get the “Face” page on the A-Team fan club site to come up first failed? :)

    What does determine this? I always assumed it was the #1 listing, which also powers the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

  4. By Ciaran | December 19th, 2007 at 7:51 pm

    @Jane - me neither; I was actually typing Facebook into the address bar when I discovered this (got a bit trigger happy with ‘enter’).

    But some people might want info on Dirk Benedict’s alter-ego, as Pete suggests.

    I’d just love to know what decides this.

  5. By Ciaran | December 20th, 2007 at 10:34 am

    @David - you missed out shoulders, knees & toes. Don’t worry, I checked.

    Shoulders - Google search
    Knees - ditto
    Toes - ditto

    Phew!

  6. By Sorry Andy, You’re Wrong: Google ‘Search Within A Site’ Is A Big Deal | Just Another Social Profile Really | March 29th, 2008 at 2:16 pm

    […] into the address bar I’m taken, via a Google search, to the Washington Post site. Christ, I only have to type face into the address bar for Google to assume that I want to go to Facebook. So why, when I actually use Google, should all these hurdles be placed in my […]