Google and the Atlanta Douchebag

Factual Questions
1

Some thread that I don’t recall linked me to this article about John Fitzgerald Page, who is apparently the poster child of douchebags. In fact the article claims that if you Google Atlanta douchebag, this guy’s name will pop right up.

And it did! But what surpised me is that I didn’t even have to type it all in – as I typed, a drop down list appeared of words/phrases I might be typing so I could select it from the list and save some keystrokes. And there on the list was “Atlanta douchebag”! I think this might be called “predictive text” but I’m not sure if the technology is the same.

So what I want to know is where the items on this list come from. I know it’s not coming from the Windows “autocomplete” function, because I’m quite certain I’ve never before searched for Atlanta Douchebag. I can’t imagine that any vendor or sponsor would have paid Google to add that term to the list.

Could it really be that it is simply a list from Google of the most popular searches by everyone? It’s almost as hard to imagine that is such a popular search.

This is on the generic google search page, not Advanced Search or any of the other specialized pages.

Does it appear on your list too?

2

http://www.googleautocomplete.com/

3

It’s true.

It works in both the Google search engine extension in Firefox, the Google search engine extension in IE 8, and on google.com.

It’s the third on the list when you type “atlanta dou”

Bing (Microsoft’s search engine) does not come up with the same result, however. While it does have search suggestions, the search suggestion for Google is based on Google’s stats.

4

I’m just happy my name doesn’t come up.

5

As if.

6

Just read the link. What a douche.

7

He looks like he has some Hanover ancestry, like this portrait of King George III. His face has sort of a doughy look to it; not ugly, but not extraordinarily handsome. His car, clothes, etc are mediocre.

As Stephen Keshner might say, he thinks he’s shit-hot, but he’s just weak-dick.

8

Not on page 1, at least.