Google has some fantastic OneBox results. We've all seen most of them: the answer to important queries such as "number of horns on a unicorn" and "what is the answer to life the universe and everything", in addition to more sensible results, like accurate information as to "what time is it in Sydney?"
However, we feel that Google has neglected to include some important information in its OneBox offerings. As such, we've taken it upon ourselves to craft the next generation of OneBox results.
Honestly, Google. Get to work.
I was just checking.
good one, sean. very clever. can't we all just get some free stuff around here?
"Location of my carkeys"
Googlemap shows up with blinking dot where the keys are.
Now THAT would truly improve the quality of life..
Thetjo, do you mean something like this? :)
I was once demonstrating AQA (British text answer service) to my parents and sent the question:
It was about 10 at night and I got a response along the lines of:
Brilliant!
That is genius!
How about..
Yahoo should employ the OneBox result feature for all those times when people use it to search for "google search engine."
The result should just say, "siiiigh."
Well, what do you know?
When you actually search for 'google search engine' on google, the 10th listing is ours. Siiiigh. ;)
+1 for Eddie Izzard reference. :-D
If I could thumb this up twice, I would. I could go on with Celebrity Jeopardy OneBoxes and search suggests all day. "Celebrity Mothers" yields "The Day is Mine." "Why is it funny=Because it's bigger than a regular hat." "Therapists" yields "Did you mean: The Rapists?"
"December 25th" = "Did you mean: July 7th"
"July 7th" = "Did you mean: February 11th?"
Errr - American references I presume? Please explain for the dumb Brit..
Ciaran, I will facebook-message you. It takes a bit longer to explain than uninterested folks will probably want to read here.
Can you explain them to me too? :)
It's a SNL reference; David emailed me them but I still need to get round to watching them
The last one: oh my gosh, we should have done that.
what about:
MSN
WTF? FAIL!
Or:
Go to Jail
Do not pass go to not collect £200
This was great! One to add to the list...
Search Querry: Jenny's Number
OneBox Result: 867-5309
Hmmm...I thought that was SEOmoz's number
We worked that one out in the end (not sure if we let you guys know though). The phone company who set us up with new phone lines uses that number to conduct tests. They messed up when they forgot to remove the number once they were done with setting us up.
Darn it, another we didn't think of!
This one narrowly missed the cut, on account of its SEO-specific nature. But hell, the comments are fair game.
I love how we messed up the Rambo one - check out the title of Rambo II. Inebriation + blogging = First Blog Part II.
Agh, fail. I guess we can call it a purposeful mistake, for relevance's sake. No? Okay, I'll go now.
LOL. Freudian Slip, methinks.
I was wondering if Rambo had a blog... and how he managed to kill so many people by just blogging... :D
I've read many a blog that bored me to death.
Silly Carfeu... the pen is mightier than the sword, of course.
I wish Rambo had a blog. It would be the greatest blog ever, right next to Chuck Norris!
The best page on the Internet.
Awesome. That page brings whole new meaning to relevance!
Nice! I love it.
This one comes pretty close to.
almost as good as "french military victories" or the WMD 404 error page!
Good Job!
Awesome!!! For a second I thought it was for real ...... hahah :)))
Cheers :)
Hey, so, can you believe we haven't gotten more comments about our inspired SMX image? I told you it should have been in the post itself!
..
Is this the way to Amarillo?
another funny one: type in "find chuck norris" and click on I'm feeling lucky. :-)
Ok - so that's neat. But how the hell has it been fixed that the results page is not actually served by Google?
I've now worked this out (with some helpful comments from colleagues) and feel pretty bloody stupid!
;)
I only saw your first comment this morning and was going to reply but I figured you'd get your head around it at some point :)
The middle of the week is much easier to deal with when I wake up to this amount of humor.
A random Eddie Izzard reference as well.
Kringelbert Fishtybuns
Steviebuns Buttritrundle.
Cake or Death?
luv the engelbert jokes...from Eddie Izzard: https://www.auntiemomo.com/cakeordeath/d2ktranscription.html#englebert
Oh you are my hero! I'm frequently sending youtube of eddie to friends but its so challenging to remember what line is from where.
Or even which show its from, got them all on DVD
:) funDiva Christy
hoocha hoocha hoocha... lobster!
You have no idea how pleased I am that Eddie fans read our blog :)
For next time..
KW: microsoft bug fix
OneBox/mistype result:
Are you F***ing Kidding? Be ALOT more specific.
You WIN, without even mentioning Vista. :-)
Amazing post, Jane. Amazing.
I would expect:
2008 presidential election winner
The candidates' ad agencies
Who's the biggest SEO frat-boy?
Chris Hooley
What's the story to Digg this morning? This one.
Wow. Amazing amount of negative comments over at Digg. They just don't get it.
"Buried as fake".
Well. D'oh.
Do you really need to add a [Humour] tag or something? Jeeez.
Actually, it's filed under "All >> Ofbeat >> Comedy".
D'oh! indeed.
HELL YEAH!!!
Has anyone noticed that Google Trends has every single one of these OneBox links listed in their Top 100 searches. Something tells me it has nothing to do with searches but a lot more to do with anchor text that Googlebot is crawling.
Hmmm, interesting.
P.S. I have a screenshot if anyone is interested.
Brent D. Payne
I screen-capped all of it, too. I actually do think it has to do with the phrases people are searching for. Many of the Digg comments on this piece were along the lines of "omg wtf these dont come up when u search for them lame buried." This only means that many of the tens of thousands of visitors to this page tested out what actually happens when you search for these phrases.
Interestingly, the queries I actually link to (because I don't link to any of the fake ones) appear in Google Trends right now, too, but at a far lower position than the ones where people actually had to open a new tab or leave the page and search for things themselves.
By the way, I'm wonderfully impressed that this post is bigger than American Idol.
Ah, I didn't know there was a Digg play to it. Twitter me the link to Digg please. In that case, I am not having a heart attack (as I rely a little too heavily on G'Trends).
Oh . . . the power of Digg. ;-)
Thanks for the info!!
Brent D. Payne
Digg link here.
Given that "things rick astley would never do" is the top searched term at Google right now, I lay claim to the idea that I've Rick Rolled the Internet.
Rickrolling is so yesterday.
Thanks to some Kiwi chick and her boss, "OneBoxing" is the new Rickroll. All the cool kids are doing it!
Best designated SEO driver EVAR
I should know not to get in that car.
Hey! I thought you were a fan... Did I not get you back safe & sound every time? ;)
Yeah, both times! We only got a) lost in Vegas and b) onto the wrong side of the road in Long Beach ;)
At least I got you guys to the airport in one piece!
Holy schnike those were hilarious! After reading, I was compelled to seek out and listen to the 'Kyle's mom' song again. LMAO! I used to know it by heart :D
Thankfully, I didn't get that same urge for Engelbert.
After careful consideration, I really believe that the Astley and cowbell OneBoxes should be adopted by Google. How are they more ridiculous than "number of horns on a unicorn?"
Composes email:
To: matt cutts
Subject: your website
Great. I've now spent 20 minutes trying to find new funny onebox searches. Which is less time competing with all you people.
(shakes fist)
Curse you SEOMOZ!!!!!!
Holy shit! Disregard it's one of the top 10 Diggs right now!
Nice work!! Very nice work! Are you getting a Porsche as your bonus? Although I'd prefer a Dodge Viper. ;-)
Brent D. Payne
Funny. I've been thinking about sports cars lately.
You are not going to believe this but now these are the top ranked searches for yahoo as well. (I guess we know who really powers yahoo's search). The link is too long and keeps getting cut off because it includes all the queries as get variables in the url. Hence the tiny url: https://tinyurl.com/2q9j9y
Well played, my friend. Very well played ;)
@ you are all idiots -
a begrudging thumbs up you bastard! ;)
another good result is a search for how to fake good content
That's wonderful! I love Google's sense of humour sometimes :)
Very funny post!
Seach: "MSN + Yahoo?"
Result: "Google forever"
That would be awesome!I wish Google could tell me what I should get my wife for her birthday this year...~Brett
You guys have no idea how pleased I am (and how pleased Rand probably is) that this is still funny in the morning.
I knew there was a reason I woke up this morning. This is hilarious! Thanks for the mid-week, gut-bustin' laugh! Keep 'em coming-
Jim
Jane, now you need to serve us at least one funny SEO post a week. We all love it.
Search Query: "SEO humor master"
OneBox answer: "Jane from the land of SEOmoz"
Try this:
GFGYoYoYoYiggle
Tom Raywood
Very funny you guys! Rick-rolled!
I so agree Google should add the cowbell onebox. That would be classic. :)
very good post Jane. Seems that you had some fun making it, at least I did reading it!
This is hilarious guys! Freakin genius.
Laughed so hard reading the Diggers comments as well....
Very good. The lesson I learned: I need to start drinking more.
Second lesson: You need a new avatar ;)
I missed it the first time, but I just clicked on your link. I am not at all a Husky fan. Live in Arizona. I just picked that up because my nickname is blogdawg and had intended to dump it right away. Its been a year!
Actually working on that right now. Need a decent picture and so far all of the ones I have make me look old and bald. It must be the camera.
funny post...I like the Rambo entry
We all know what Andrew Sutherlands would look like...
where's the nearest public bathroom?
Funny that he gets away with that and Calacanis is run out of town!
Ha ha! This was great!
Muwahahaha! Love it!
Definitely funnier than my 3 A.M. blogging attempt.
Shame on Google for not seeing what REALLY needs to be on OneBox haha... greatness!
Awsome post Jane - the power of Digg is awsome sometimes..
And oh, how I miss the music of Rick. I must put some on in the office and see how long it takes before I am insulted...
He's apparently making a come back, rumours of a tour are afoot... would be awesome if he paid homage to the cause of his recent rebirth by pulling a reverse Rick-Roll and sending someone else on stage at one of his gigs.
haha this was definitely still funny in the morning when everyone is sober. I loved this. Made my day.
Rick Astley makes ME cry... so the first set of results are an error surely?
I still don't understand how you guys had the energy last night (or should I say this morning) to put together this post ;-)
It's amazing what you can do when you think, "oh my gosh, that would be hilarious! Quick - open Photoshop."
Glad to see your perfect game was restored. This was a great community post. Loved it.
My vote:
"Wasabi Wednesdays"...out.
"Go out and have a few Tuesday happy hour cocktails with Rand and come up with some pretty funny shit for Wednesdays"...in.
Thanks Sean! Although something tells me that this method of creativity has a short shelf life ;)
funny
More cowbell made this article great
FYI...
Gerry Dorsey (Englebert Humperdinck, Zingelbert Bembledack, Slut Bunwalla...) turns 72 today. Happy B-day!
sorry.. got the giggles on the Rick Astley one again... for the 3rd time!!
LMFAO!!
Ah heck. Someone gave those Rick Astley lyrics the PIE Chart treatment only a few weeks ago, and now this...
I understand this is a joke, har har har, okay now down to business. I sincerely hope that nobody really wants google, or any other web crawler for that matter (what's a yahoo again? oh right, someone from the deep south) to add more stop words to their search engine list. That would totally defeat the whole purpose of the damn app in the first place! What if I wanted to see every page that has, "i know kung fu" in it, etc. Oh I know, lets put a button on the bottom of the stupid page that says, "click here for the actual search results", and when you click that button it takes you to a picture of a middle finger flipping you off.
Deep breaths dude, deep breaths...