Comments on: Google Tries Too Hard To Appear Useful, Starts Making Up New Words

By: Kent Davidson

Kent Davidson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:02:21 +0000

Nah – they use a simple algorithm which concatenates dictionary words together:

bumpnutterfrund

BUMP NUTTER FRUND
BUMP UTTER FUND

Completely meaningless (and yes, produces no results) but each term they finally suggested is a real word. “Nutter” is slang, so probably not suggested, and “Frund”, uh, no.

In a way, smart, as most web domains started off this way.

http://www.bumpnutterfrund.com/

Nice test!

By: seobro

seobro — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 15:09:22 +0000

I typed in “V!^@RA” and got a link to visual resources…

So that’s where all the spam has been coming from. LOL

By: Gab Goldenberg

Gab Goldenberg — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:19:48 +0000

Amusing find, Mike. If I had to guess, I’d say Google cut up the word into chunks, saw the frund was maybe a so-called ‘fat finder’ typo (e.g. hitting two keys at once – f and r) and you meant ‘fund’, not ‘frund’…

By: Suze Ingram

Suze Ingram — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 06:58:03 +0000

Wow! That really is silly.

By: Tad Miller

Tad Miller — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:13:40 +0000

I would bet money that the spelling suggestions are from a database of actual search queries that Google has seen before.

By: JohnMu

JohnMu — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:30:52 +0000

Most software spell checkers are not tied to official sources — they’re based on statistical analysis. That said, I have no idea how it works out in this particular case , it does seem a bit strange (as does your query )… If you’re interested, there’s a pretty neat posting about spell checkers by Peter Norvig (from Google) at http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html (where he explains how a spell checker written in 21 lines of Python works).

By: Yura

Yura — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:17:01 +0000

It is a new strategy to increase the AdWords market. Imagine someone typos, Google suggests a non-existing word and someone attaches meaning to the word. For example, bumputterfund may as well mean “A suggestion of Google to search for a non-existing word” or “Another screw up by Google” or “The fund for bump-challenged putters”. People start writing articles, selling stuff, showing AdSense, visitors click on them or others might even buy Ad Words. Voila, more money to Google.

Now add the scale of typos and possible new words and you get the Googolistic scale of profit