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M.I.A.'s album "/\/\/\Y/\" is ungoogleable

29 pointsby sublemonicabout 15 years ago

20 comments

matthiasabout 15 years ago
this reminds me of Super Discount 2 released by Etienne De Crecy in 2004. He named each track after a p2p client, thereby search-obscuring the titles.<p>1. Poisoned 2. Fast Track 3. Grokster 4. Morpheus 5. Bit Torrent 6. Audio Galaxy 7. G2 8. Soul Seek 9. Gifted 10. Limewire 11. Overnet
jessorabout 15 years ago
It's quite a problem. I'd really appreciate if google could just let me search for strings i put in quotes exactly the way they are.<p>Recently I wanted to google stuff about the windowmanager i3. It was quite difficult, even with queries like "i3 windowmanger".
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leftnodeabout 15 years ago
In the long run, this probably won't matter, people will just search for "mia new album" and find it just fine.
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goodsideabout 15 years ago
If enough people search for it, Google picks up on it and adds in some sort of override to the no-punctuation rule. This is why "C#" and "F#" return different results from "C" and "F", but "Z#" gets no such benefit. Other times the exceptions apply to broad patterns of letters, since any single letter with "++" appended will give specific results even if it's not the name of anything (try "y++"), but + signs are in general ignored ("+++what--is+happening--" gives the same results as "what is happening").
slapshotabout 15 years ago
I'll give $20 to the first AMAZON-listed band with a SQL-injection album name.<p>"'); DROP TABLE ARTISTS"<p>(Yes, #327)
pmiller2about 15 years ago
Sigur Ros put out an album a few years back titled <i>()</i>. Yes, an empty pair of parentheses. It took me forever to even find a store that carried it because searching web sites couldn't hope to get any result.<p>I did eventually find a copy, though.<p>Edit: Hah, zero Google results, period! How's that for un-Googlable?
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heyitsnickabout 15 years ago
"Pick a band name that no one else has so that it will show up first in google ... Pick an album name that is a made up word that no1 has ever even typed ... Name a song after some phrase that will get you accidental google hits."<p>These 3 things together make no sense to me. On the one hand it's suggesting to pick unique band names and albums, and then suggesting to pick regular phrases for songs that might get "accidental" hits.<p>If there's a benefit to getting said accidental hits, wouldn't this work for a band name? Surely Grizzly Bear would benefit from this? And I don't htink it's a real issue if your band name isn't top of the list because you are competing with 'real bears'; people aren't going to give up finding you if you are 4th on the list, or they have to type "grizzly bear band" in the search instead.
tzuryabout 15 years ago
However, '"/ / / Y/" album' does work as well as "/\/\/\Y/\ new album"<p>seems like "\" of each "\/" is treated as escape character<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&#38;q=/\/\/\Y/\+new+album" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&#38;q=/\/\/\Y/\+new+album</a><p>and<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&#38;q=/+/+/+Y/+album" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&#38;q=/+/+/+Y/+album</a>
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pookabout 15 years ago
Chrome's Translate feature has let me down.<p>What language is the comment thread in?
DeusExMachinaabout 15 years ago
<i>Does n e 1 know how google works?</i><p>It took me a while to understand that "n e 1" is actually "anyone".
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JeffJenkinsabout 15 years ago
I was looking at issues with integrating Amazon's products into my job's website a few years ago and I ran into an album called: [+++++]. I'd link to it, but Amazon's search can't find it and I don't remember what category it was under
liniabout 15 years ago
On the plus side - an artist can be sure that piracy of their badly named album will also be low, since people won't be able to find it in the torrent search engines as well.
mmelinabout 15 years ago
"Can M.I.A. call the Google CEO and tell him to ‘index her shit’? Does n e 1 know how google works? Is there like an old guy who has to go through a file cabinet 2 find results for you every time you search for something?"<p>So the author knows what SEO stands for, but doesn't know the answer to this? Please. My impression is that this guy is intentionally trying to downplay his knowledge to avoid being labeled a "computer geek" by the hipsters in his audience.
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miguelpaisabout 15 years ago
It should be googleable on this version of google though:<p><a href="http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-hacker" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-hacker</a>
tom_ilsinszkiabout 15 years ago
M.I.A.'s album is also "untorrentable".
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ddragerabout 15 years ago
I don't think this will have much impact on sales. You can just search for M.I.A.<p>It's because mysql_real_escape_string, which many sites use, escapes all \ with /\. So on many sites (not nessessarily Google, you will actually be searching for //\//\//\Y//\?
kree10about 15 years ago
I can think of a couple bands with names that give zero results on google: "!!!" and "+/-".<p>Though ungoogleable, I see they are "amazonable".
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harshpotatoesabout 15 years ago
more than likely people will just search for: MIA maya album.<p>I think something similar happened with a few smaller bands back in the p2p days who tried to make themselves 'unsearchable' and therefore 'unpirateable'. Pirates always find a way.
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lwhiabout 15 years ago
I reckon this is clever. It makes it far more difficult to illegally share the album.
anedisiabout 15 years ago
i'll google my new album. upss.