TECHNOLOGY/ NOT BORN YESTERDAY

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when engine failure strikes on the virtual superhighway

Until about ten years ago, when I needed to know something quickly there weren't that many options. A library usually involved a day-trip, one could subscribe to online information sources like Mintel and Euromonitor, or ring friends and be referred to folks who claimed to know what they were talking about.

Nowadays, the same process can take as little as thirty seconds, for we are become the Google generation. We have engines, and they search. Instant knowledge, near-immediate expertise and bluffing through are but a few clicks away.

In theory.

But like all things hitech, there are drawbacks. I'm sure that over time most of these will be sorted out, and I'm equally sure some won't. One of the latter is the spooky way in which some searches result in bombardment by folks selling things you don't want. If you have a website and have signed up for Google Analaytics, I recommend avoidance of any searches involving surgical appliances of any kind, as this seems to alert somebody to the certainty of your near-death in a car-wreck while engaged in sexual intercourse. Nobody wants to talk much about how this happens, but as the Church of Mammon averrs, Google moves in mysterious ways.

Still, this is nit-picking - or at least, so my MP tells me. Mind you, he doesn't get twenty spam emails a day about funeral directors, car insurance, and their role in making your dick bigger. MPs tend not to, because using the House of Commons ISP keeps all but the most suicidal spammers at bay. The rest of us have to be more circumspect. This nonsense aside however, by contrast all the technical and segmentation problems will be solved in time - it's just that while they exist, insouciance in using Search Engines is not a good policy.

We need to start at the start. As the generic term suggests, we are dealing with engines here. To the best of my knowledge, no engine has ever so much as passed a GCSE or taken a driving test. So when giving directions, the best wayapproach is based on the assumption of an aggregate Jeeves,Yahoo and Google axis IQ of around minus fifty-eight.

For example, type in 'gluten-free recipes', and you'll get sites about discounted gluten, and free recipes. Getting answers about free gluten for some reason doesn't happen: perhaps there's no such thing. Anyway, the trick is to type 'recipes gluten-free bread' or whatever. It's a bit like dealing with folks who've got advanced dementia: open-ended questions just confuse them.

As search engines are confused by almost every request, I'm sure that you too get those dreaded 'Did You Mean...?' after typing in some phrase or other. Eccentricity comes as standard in these supplementaries, but some of them can make your day. I once typed in 'watch moving parts' and was asked 'Did you mean watch moving pants?' When this happens it's a waste of time sending a witty insult back: I simply store the questions in a back-up file and then use them as source material for surreal gags. 'Do you Watch moving pants? Discreet counselling offered at WMP Anonymous....'. (I do find it weird, by the way, to be asked a question when there's no way to reply. I understand perfectly well that you must click on 'drays' if you didn't mean to look for day horses, but the whole thing seems ill-mannered somehow.)

Nevertheless, while Saddo the Search Engine is allowed to ask you questions to which you cannot respond, it doesn't work the other way round. Your sole aim might well be to get an answer, but this comes from sites not choo-choos. The world is in fact waiting for the Answer Carriage to be invented and stuck on the back of the Question Engine - and if anyone's likely to do it, my money would be on Wikipedia....of which more anon. Suffice to say that interrogatory punctuation suffers the same fate as the derogatory invocation: it's ignored.

Always assume that opposites apply. By this I mean it's a waste of time typing in 'recipes gluten-free not bread', because fourteen million sites (at least) will pop up showing you thousands of ways to bake bread. And above all, never ever type never. 'Never' is an abstract concept projecting into the future, and thus moves to a higher plane of uncertainty called The Unknowable. For that you need a Search Enigma, not a Search Engine. They haven't made that one yet, but they will, they will. In the meantime, don't do what I did and look for the old song Never on a Sunday. The search goblin will simply switch to the past tense, and put up a billion facts about people who died on the other six days, odd Sunday-trading laws, and 23,000 church sites offering Sunday services.

Dates in general don't get one very far. I once committed the double-dog mortal sin of both including a specific date and asking a question. This was 'Why FTSE rallying 11.9.08?' I suspect the runaway train has a form of numerical dyslexia, but again to ask is to assume intelligence. Given one could ask this particular question of a hundred Wealth Managers and get no answer, it showed unusually naive optimism on my part. What I got back was (1) Did you mean 'fuse'? (2) the details of every car rally since 1908 and (3) the predictable twenty million sites offering free streamed FTSE data, none of which turns out to be free when you try and access it. I left the process no wiser, and very puzzled indeed as to why fuses rally, and what happens when they do.

The ultimate no-no, however, is the website search engine. I've written on this subject briefly before, but in my entire experience of typing stuff into site-specific GO! boxes, I have only twice gone anywhere. As far as I can tell, in fact, there are just the two brands on the planet whose site engine will tell you something useful, or indeed anything: one is Wikipedia, and the other one - believe it or not - is the CIA website.

From where I'm standing, Wikipedia is in pole position at the moment when it comes to finding stuff without the pointless discovery of nine billion of websites. Google's mastery of the Information Universe is like most things the size of the universe: an infinite tyranny of inexplicable existence. I go first to Wikipedia nine times out of ten now; not only there you understand, as an awful lot of their 'facts' are twaddle: but this hones the process of searching wonderfully, and gives one some key words via which to check the facts thus uncovered in a fraction of the time. I'm sure the marketing folk at Wikipedia are well aware of the innate advantage they enjoy. And I'm sure Google are too.

The CIA is a remarkable site in that not only is the sum of human knowledge on there (and it is devoid of bias - I'm serious, it really is) the search engine is terrific. You could argue that if the security services can't organise a fact-finder then we're all doomed, but on the other hand what makes their GO! unique is that it does appear to show signs of cerebral matter. Again, from the code-cracking people this is kind of de rigueur, but I can't help feeling that in, say, the Russian Federation, the KGB's site contains only a few snippets of inaccurate and propagandized information, the rest being classified. All I can tell you is that 'How much water in world' (without the question mark) gave me the answer to within a few fluid ounces in seconds. You don't get the same success by typing in 'How much gold really in Fort Knox', but then I'll try anything once, and to be fair that's none of my business.

The other ninety million onsite search engines were long ago shunted into a siding everyone's forgotten. This obvious reality is confirmed when you go (for example) to the NHS Self-Diagnosis website, and type 'feet' into the GO! box. A new page unfolds, on which is the legend:

I'm sorry, 0 results corresponded with this question

In the context of all this specious obfuscation, unrefined choice and programmer ineptitude, it is a relief of sorts to know that one can exact the most marvellous form of revenge. For whatever the type of truth-seeking engine, there are endless hours of fun to be had - for all the family - simply by adopting the Edward Lear strategy to briefing. Edward Lear was a Victorian nonsense poet. He was and remains one of the foremost exponents of surreal literature, and is - alongside Beachcomber - a top-flight hero for me. Lear invented - among many other things - the common cormorant who lays eggs inside a paper bag; and Beachcomber studied any and all attempts by plucky Brits to cross the Atlantic on a lawnmower.

The Edward Lear strategy involves asking the search engine to seek out sites on the basis of criteria like 'Underwater Rugby'. You'll get 105,000 results on this one. 'Polystyrene squirrels' racks up 8,460 references. 'Brick Waves' evokes a staggering 1.95 million places to visit. And 'Tense wasps' picks up a respectable 44,200 sites. Whenever there's a power cut - or the dinner party banter has stalled - running a sweepstake among the guests as to who can achieve the highest and lowest surreal-search results is guaranteed to keep the hilarity going far into the early hours.

But do remember: if you go for 'knitting pasta' (1.45 million) be prepared for the supplementary, 'Did you mean sitting rasta?' (94,900)

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