[Air-l] counting google hits

[Thomas Koenig]

At 18:46 04/03/2005, you wrote:
>perhaps to sort of add to the google hits discussion, I bring you
>googlefight, and I've prearranged a little contest between internet
>research and internet studies

...

>and one between internet research and sociology:
>http://www.googlefight.com/index.php? 
>lang=en_GB&word1=internet+research&word2=sociology


The proper query would of course have been

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=%22internet+research%22&word2=sociology

or,

http://tinyurl.com/4mufc

respectively, which soiology wins by a factor of 10. Still an 
underestimation, because "internet research" might refer to both research 
about the Internet or research conducted via the internet, but getting there.

>we beat them all hands down....  granted of course.... mostly you can
>orchestrate just about any result....

No, you cannot. You have virtually no influence on the results of 
googlefight, which, of course, doesn't mean that you cannot fool it into 
results that *appear* nonsensical.

Thomas


-- 
thomas koenig, ph.d.
department of social sciences, loughborough university
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/staff/thomas/index.html