Google effectively ends objective searches

Mark Mandel thnidu at GMAIL.COM
Mon May 30 22:22:01 UTC 2011


(Sigh.) It may come down to that. -- Good point about "objective" vs.
"baseline". Decustomized searches aren't object, but customized ones are the
OPPOSITE of objective. And replicability is the other key point: two
researchers running the same search at the same time should get the same
results.

Mark



On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 10:41 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

> Thanks to Mark Mandel and Ben Zimmer for raising this issue.
>
> I use a different browser to perform baseline searches. This browser
> is always signed-out and has customization disabled.  Baseline
> searches allow for some degree of replicability within a time-window.
> Baseline searches also are useful if you have a blog, and you wish to
> know how much "Google juice" you have.
>
> Note, I am using the term "baseline" instead of "objective". Firefox,
> Chrome, and Internet Explorer are "different browsers" in the
> description above.
>
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list