Using Google to learn what boyfriends and girlfriends want from each other

From Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" blog:

This shows Google’s remarkable power as a source of data on a range of human behaviors, emotions, and opinions. It gives us insights into what people might care the most about concerning a given topic. When people search a particular political leader, what are their main concerns? What are people secretly guilty about? For better or for worse, Google’s obsession with collecting and refining data has given us a window into each other’s fascinating and telling curiosities.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Bahumat

Huh, here’s a fascinating little factoid:

Type in “I love” and you’ll get results.
Type in “I hate” and nothing.

Evidently there’s some results to be found there that are of concern.
toxonix

The answer is that women want to control and manipulate men like puppets, and men simply desire sexual favors from attractive women.

I was disturbed to see this one:
“How can I get my girlfriend pregnant”
WTF?
- blueelm
  
  Well I’d say getting some one pregnant (presumably without their consent) would be up there on the manipulative strategy scale.
- alphagirl
  
  wow, misogynist much? I don’t see how the men’s list is any more manipulative… the lists seem pretty parallel, with the women’s leaning more toward emotional needs and the men’s more towards physical.
  - Vidya108
    
    “…with the women’s leaning more toward emotional *needs* and the men’s more towards physical *wants*.”
    
    There, fixed that for you.
    - IsolatedGestalt
      
      On which objective scale is that *need* vs. *want* distinction made again?
Anonymous

It’s pretty depressing looking at the “how do I get my husband” and “how go I get my wife” queries.
Anonymous

i see safe search was turned on.
Avram / Moderator

I notice that “trust me” is #4 on both lists.
nutbastard

some of these match up, problem and solution, directly across from each other:

want him to propose? give ‘em head!
want head? propose!

want him to spend more time with you? sleep with him!
want her to sleep with you? spend more time with her!

want him to love you again? lose weight!

want her to love you again? be more romantic!
sad dolls

Why won’t my parakeet eat my diarrhea?
blueelm

Not that amazing or interesting really, but I do like the “how do I get my (boy/girl)friend to break up with me search. Apparently spinelessness is sex neutral.
mypalmike

It’s too bad a couple of the lines got cut off. It turns out the second line on the left is “how can i get my boyfriend to spend more tip money from his waitering job on me”.
dwdyer

This is a fun timewaster.

how many men
how many women
how can I get my cat to
how can I get my dog to
how can I enlarge
how can I reduce
how can I smoke
how can I drink
how can I eat
how do you get
how do you lose
how do you win
how do you eat
why do men
why do women
Rob Thornton

Someone on the Predictably Irrational blog pointed out that this search cannot determine whether the searcher is in a same-sex relationship or not….
MattMcKeon

Web Seer gives you a nice visualization to do side-by-side comparisons of this type. The authors wrote an op-ed about it for the NY Times a few weeks ago.
MattMcKeon

Oh, and another good one to try out: “is my daughter ” vs. “is my son ”
Trent Hawkins

It seems like some of the questions on one side answer the corresponding questions on the other.
- bbonyx
  
  That observation totally made my day. Thank you, sir.
- blueelm
  
  I agree. You could probably get your girlfriend to trust you by spending more time with her, for instance :P
Anonymous

We’re assuming an awful lot about how the google search engine works. A friend of mine who worked at google for many years always laughs when he hears people discussing tips and tricks using google’s search, because they’re way off on their ideas of google rankings and so forth. Of course, he won’t reveal his secrets, and only tells me that they’re missing lots of important pieces to the puzzle.
- Anonymous
  
  Sure, because goodness knows that Google wouldn’t want you to know how best to use their search engine. That’s a secret. They’d MUCH rather have you get ambiguous results that could come from any other search engine…
blueelm

I highly recommend a “Should Women” vs. “Should Men” comparison.

Never have I had greater insight into the pressing issues facing men.
jtegnell

Seems like quite a few of you aren’t bothering to read the previous posts!
- japroach
  
  Yeah, that’s standard fare here on the boing. Their brain must turn off as they scroll down the page.
  
  Someone write me an “auto-hide redundant” greasemonkey script and I will reward you graciously.
- blueelm
  
  And then people wonder how the same innovations could pop up in so many distant places over time.
Anonymous

Interestingly, if you just try “how do I get my “, the top hit that appears to show up is “how do I get my sister to sleep with me” — which I think raises even more questions than eyebrows.
teapot

I can’t believe no one has dropped http://autocompleteme.com/ yet. The latest 3 winners:

My robot is pregnant

Onions are my husband

Google killed bambi
Anonymous

I find it fascinating that so many people apparently type *questions* into google, rather than keywords or phrases that they expect to appear on the kind of page they are looking for.

It seems they believe google will understand and then answer the question. Before they typed “How can I get my girlfriend to X”, did they type “Good morning google, how are you today? Can you help me with something please?”
- jungletek
  
  I think you’re forgetting the fact that google _crawls the web_ to get words in certain groups, so that you can search for those words in certain combinations and get usable and more importantly, *relevant* results.
  Therefore, typing in questions works because someone, somewhere, at some time, typed a question that was the same or very similar. E.g. a message board or similar.
  Sure, many times a boolean or other structured search will give you greater controls on returned results… but I think Google has probably realized that having the search engine return relevant results when Joe or Jane Blow enters a natural-language query might be a good idea.
agreenster

Here’s a fun one:

“is Obama”

Try it.
Anonymous

It doesn’t necessarily show what people care about the most, but what newspapers, magazines, blogs, etc. THINK people should care about the most.
Anonymous

funniest return for “how do i get my wife to”…

how do i get my wife to sleep with me in fable 2
ADavies

Someone has set up a funny one. Try “sarapalin is”. Just like that (with the space missing). :D
Anonymous

You only have to read the top line (most popular question) in each column to understand what is going on:

How can I get my boyfriend to propose
vs.
How can I get my girlfriend to give me head
- Anonymous
  
  How can I get my boyfriend to propose?
  
  A: Give him head.
  
  How can I get my girlfriend to give me head?
  
  A: Propose to her.
  
  And on it goes.
- Anonymous
  
  yep. best comment.
bunedoggle

I can’t help but think that these two lists could be matched up to give everyone the answers they need:

How can I get my girlfriend to give me head? Propose to her.

How can I get my boyfriend to stop smoking? Loose weight.

How can I get my girlfriend to break up with me? Be more affectionate.

OK, so maybe they don’t all match up.
- Gloria
  
  From what I hear from some married men, that’s the exact opposite strategy: The head stops after the proposal.
Anonymous

I made same investigation on Yandex search engine on russain. Results are pretty much similar so not only Google that smart

see the results here

http://www.linkads.ru/blog/news/250/ispolzcem-yandeks-dlya-togo-chto-by-ponyat-chego-xotyat-devushki-ot-parnej-i-parni-ot-devushek.html
Anonymous

I was inspired by this and decided to create:

* http://askgoogle.tumblr.com/

Enjoy!
Blinde Schildpad

Compare “christianity is” or “buddhism is” with “islam is”…
schr0559

I wanted to look up something about After Effects (the video software) the other day. The nearest machine had IE with its Bing toolbar installed. Typed “after effects” into the search box and one of the options was (and still is) “after effects of abortion”.
Anonymous

Umm I typed this in on the google homepage and got different results… anyone actually try this one rather just taking their word for it
Anonymous

Does it really take much for an intelligent person to realize that programs can make their websites do whatever they want? These are some of the best programmers in the world working at one of the most laissez faire companies out there. I’m fairly certain some of that content that comes when you start typing was planted there purely for the entertainment of a Google employee. In addition to all other serious business.
- blueelm
  
  Doesn’t even have to be google programmers. I imagine you could write something that could bump up a desired search. It doesn’t even have to be fancy actually. A network of people with some scripts could probably do it. I dunno, it depends on whether google looks at multiple queries from the same place… but that could be overcome easily enough too. Whatever, but I suspect surely some of the searches on google are for lulz.
Joe2010

If one list was used to answer the other:

Q: How can I get my boyfriend to propose?
A: Give me head.

Q: How can I get my boyfriend to spend more time with me?
A: Sleep with me.

Q: How can I get my boyfriend to love me again?
A: Lose weight.

Q: How can I get my boyfriend to trust me?
A: Trust me.
Anonymous

what is the point of literally copying the images and words of another blog and posting it on yours? should i copy this post and put it on my blog? congratulations, you are the worst of the internet.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  what is the point of literally copying the images and words of another blog and posting it on yours? should i copy this post and put it on my blog? congratulations, you are the worst of the internet.
  
  The whole point of the internet is that it’s filled with links that take you to other parts of the internet. That’s why it’s called the ‘internet’, not the ‘sit-alone-in-my-room-writing-short-stories-about-my-turtle-and-posting-them-on-my-website-that-doesn’t-have-any-links-net’.
GeekMan

Keep in mind that as a sort of census, this only samples the slice of the population that thinks Google can give them a decent answer on how to get their girlfriend to give them head.

I submit that it most likely cannot.
- Rossy
  
  I was just about to say the same thing. Not only just in regards to head-getting, but about any of it.
mypalmike

“What should I do if my penis …” vs. “What should I do if my vagina…” might be interesting.
Anonymous

I collect these autofills in a tumblog.

Nathan