Re: Surprising statistics

JSH <jstevh@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:

> Yeah in a fantasy world of your creation where you can simply
> declare that high rankings on search results are meaningless.

My homepage (which has very little original material compared to your
blogs) comes up high when we search for "functions ears toes" or
"sociology comics"[1], two topics I know nothing about.  The page related
to the former received only 21 hits in April and the latter 47.

One guy searched on "superman comic book slang" last month and came to
my site.  

Someone did a search for "measure of efficacy" last month and came to
my site.  It turns out that one of my papers uses that phrase and
comes up first in Google as a result.  Since I got three hits on that
search phrase last month, maybe my paper was relevant for them, but I
find that a bit doubtful.

Here's one for you: "Means-end reasoning".  A very im****tant topic in
practical philosophy, and yet one of my papers comes up fourth in
Google's search for that phrase.  Does it follow that my paper is
influential?  Not at all.  No one has cited that paper aside from me.
(If you search Google scholar for "Means-end reasoning", that paper
doesn't come up in the first half-dozen pages.)

Last month, someone searched for "the means-end basis for involvement"
and was directed to my paper.  I'm sure I have no idea what "means-end
basis for involvement" means.

You get the point.  Search results do not measure impact very well.  

Footnotes: 
[1]  People searching for variations on "sociology" and "comics" hit
my site about 24 times last month.  Not a lot, but more than folks
searching for "define mathematics proof" hit JSH's blog. 

-- 
Quincy (age 5): Baba, play some [computer games].
Mama: Quincy, if you want [Baba] to live, don't make those 
      suggestions.
Quincy: Make those suggestions.  Got it.