More by accident (and thanks to Firefox’s autosearch if it can’t find the URL), I accidently typed “http” (and that’s it) into my URL field. Firefox, by default, goes to Google, and then directs you to the first result it finds. What I thought was interesting is that first site when you search for http is Microsoft, followed by Yahoo, Altavista, World Wide Web Consortium, CNN, Excite, Lycos, Amazon, Adobe, and Mapquest (rounding out the top 10). Google shows up on page two, along with The New York Times, Netscape, Real, the World Health Organization, Mozilla.org, Ask.com, IMDB, Winzip, and PHP.net.
Similar results for other protocols aren’t happening because, generally, other protocols are used in product/site names (FTP, Gopher, NNTP, etc…).
I do find it interesting the variety of types of links that are showing up. For the most part, this is a “Who’s Who” of the Web. Anybody have any theories on why certain sites are showing up here versus others?
Comments
dubya owns W
That really sucks because to go to my site I type w-downarrow-enter and at least a couple times a week something goes wrong and I end up at http://www.georgewbush.com/.
I’ve thought about starting a concerted effort to take W away from Dubya. He’s only got 13k inbound links… I’m sure I could find that many bloggers to link to another site and take the top spot.
$$$ Google sorts by advertising funds doesn’t it?
They may include an advertiser that wasn’t in their database before, but I doubt they give preference to advertisers.
Besides, do you really think Microsoft, Excite, Yahoo, CNN, etc… are all advertisers on Google?