When Did You Last "feel Lucky"? Options

[JohnMu]

Who do you think uses "I'm feeling lucky" and why?

The closest I got to any information was Search Engine Watch referencing the Washington Post... With the removal of humorous "Ads by Gooooogle" and the era of personalized search (iGoogle) is the removal of the "I'm feeling lucky" button eminent?

John

[SEOigloo]

John,
I'll confess..in all my years of using Google, I have never understood what the deal is with that lucky link.

Sort of a pre-cursor to stumbleupon?

I probably won't even notice if it goes away.

Maybe people who dig chaos theory like that sense of the unexpected?
Miriam

[meriweather]

As hesitant as I am to admit this, I have never tried it. Came close a few times, but lucky is not an adjective which I would use to describe myself.

Is it really safe?

You tried it, and survived?

The thought of it being gone and never trying it has me bugged now, John. I got to give it a shot.

I'll be bock...

[bwelford]

I'd never seen it in that light before, nor had I ever tried it. What if it's a Google banana-skin kind of joke. Perhaps when you push the button, a trapdoor opens beneath your feet and .. whoosh you're gone.

[yannis]

The thought of it being gone and never trying it has me bugged now, John. I got to give it a shot.

Hasn't actually disappeared yet, but if you are like me searching either from the toolbar or have Google as homepage in FF you will not see it. Just www.google.com and you should see it.

I have used it a few times and was disappointed that the 'feeling lucky' always meant the No.1 in the results. I was expecting a random selection. There is even a Google page for it!


Yannis

[bwelford]

Perhaps you hadn't noted that "I'm feeling lucky" is copyrighted. You wouldn't want to let just anyone use it.

[bobbb]

I know a few people people that use it all the time. Tried to explain about reading the snippets in the google results but to no avail. They swear that it usually gives them what they want.

[meriweather]

I have used it a few times and was disappointed that the 'feeling lucky' always meant the No.1 in the results. I was expecting a random selection.

Disappointed about sums it up for me. Can't imagine not having the choice to look through the first 8 or 10... or 18, or 25. I spent several months with 100 results per page set as my default, just trying to gleen a bit more insight into the algos. Unless it's one of mine, I don't generally pay much attention to the #1 listing.
Whatever it takes to get a better feel for the results and perhaps refine my search a bit more till I find what it is I'm looking for - or, learn a little something new about the search engine itself.

Thought provoking post, John.

[Jozian]

Hmm... all this time and I have never had an urge to click that link.

And I never actually knew what it did.

The "I'm Feeling Lucky™" button takes you directly to the first web page Google returned for your query. You will not see the other search results at all. An "I'm Feeling Lucky" search means you spend less time searching for web pages and more time looking at them.

For example, to find the homepage for Stanford University, simply enter Stanford into the search field and click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. Google takes you directly to "www.stanford.edu", the official homepage of Stanford University.

example:
Are you feeling lucky?

I wish I had known, as I'm forever typing in 'ESPN' and then having to click on the top result to get to the actual page When I could have been getting lucky...

As an aside, I most often launch a Google using a neat little Windows add-on: Dave's Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar Deskbar I have to say, that I love this tool.

It installs on the Windows task bar, searches Google directly by default, has many many shortcuts built in (for instance typing 'ths lucky' takes me to thesaurus results for the word 'lucky' and you can build aliases like 'Cre8' to jump to the Cre8 Forums), and it is super configurable.

Frankly, I cant work as productively without it.

I hardly ever see the main page of Google, though iGoogle has me visiting a lot more recently.

-Jeff

[JohnMu]

I guess the consensus is that once you know how to Google, you don't use the "I'm feeling lucky" (anymore)?

Is it really safe?

Isn't that kind of strange - the more you know about Google, the less you feel lucky .

(...) disappointed that the 'feeling lucky' always meant the No.1 in the results. I was expecting a random selection.

Are all Google (say 1st page) results usually good - or good enough to take a random pick from? Is the first item usually not the best result?

John

[projectphp]

I couldn;t finda quote, but Google said very few people use it, but it is good good branding (i.e. people liked it). Really, with such a minial home page, it hardly takes up a lot of sapce

[eKstreme]

I never felt lucky with Google. Also, it's the wrong way to go about searching for things if searching = researching.

For navigational queries, it could be a shortcut. Then again, why on earth type [cnn.com] in the search to go to cnn.com? A lot of people do that, and try as I may, they just don't get that cnn.com is the address not just a name.

Pierre

[DianeV]

That's exactly it, Pierre. Many people don't know that they can type a domain name or URL into their browser address bar. Instead, they first somehow navigate to a search engine so that they can search for the domain so that they can get a link to click.

[bragadocchio]

I tried the "I'm feeling lucky" button a couple of times when Google first came out. Haven't had any desire to press that particular button since then.

It's more decoration than utility at this point. Perhaps if they teamed with a casino, and you had a chance at a jackpot every time you used it?

Then again, why on earth type [cnn.com] in the search to go to cnn.com? A lot of people do that, and try as I may, they just don't get that cnn.com is the address not just a name.

1. Each approach gets you there.
2. Javascript steals the focus from browser address bar to the search box, accounting for some of that behavior
3. Just typing cnn into the search box is four less key strokes

[DianeV]

Okay. I had thought that typing into the address (location) bar causes the browser to query your ISP's DNS server in order to retrieve the page, which is a different thing than querying a search engine.

Yes, each approach gets you there, but I believe the technical scenario is different. I could be wrong, though; it's been years since I looked at this.

[eKstreme]

3. Just typing cnn into the search box is four less key strokes

Well... this one is debatable. If you are a mouse junkie, then yes, typing just [cnn] is a great way to not use the keyboard. Time wise, you are waiting for the SERPs to load and then find and click the correct link. Using a mouse is that much slower.

The fastest way is to type cnn in the address bar and press Ctrl+Enter or even just enter. Browsers are clever enough to throw in a www. and a .com as default prefix and suffix.

Having said all this, no matter how much I explain this to people, they still don't want to change. Inertia at its finest.

And Lee's Newslet for today has a timely gem:

25% of eBays search traffic from Google (and thats just the top 5 words) comes from brand, domain or navigational searches for eBay (e.g. "ebay," "ebay.com" "www.ebay.com").

That's a staggering amount of traffic.

Pierre

[fisicx]

My wife is one of those. Even though the favoutites side bar is showing (with the sites listed), she still types the URL into the search box. And when the autofill box appears ignores that as well.

Another behaviour I see is people using a mouse to select form fields with default entries, deleting the entry and typing their own. I pointed out that you can use TAB to move to the next feild which auto highlights the entry and just overtype but have seen the startled rabbit look so often I've given up.

But I digress - I've never used the lucky button - but there again I've never used the 'google search' button either, I just hit the return key.

[bragadocchio]

Time wise, you are waiting for the SERPs to load and then find and click the correct link. Using a mouse is that much slower.

I didn't say that it was any faster.

[cre8pc]

I think I tried it once, years ago. Wasn't awed by it. It made no impression on me. Never used it again.

Then again, I tend to do things the hard way. If the button said "FAST ACCURATE RESULTS" instead of a stupid pub pickup line, I may have hung in there longer

[joedolson]

I have some friends who, back in 1999, programmed a neat little website which leveraged the "I'm feeling lucky" option in Google - it was just for fun, really. It had a database of unusual words and would automatically pick two then send you to whatever site popped up first in Google for that search.

Hypothetically it can save you a click - but as often as not, I'd define a failed search as one where only one result was valid and helpful. I usually assume I'll be looking at more than one page.

For extremely high confidence searches (like domain searches, for example) it'll certainly save time when compared against doing a normal search. However, like Pierre said, it's nothing compared to just typing in the domain and hitting Ctrl+Enter

The one exception, and the one place where I use the method pretty regularly, is with extremely high-confidence searches which I have memorized where I can't always remember the URL. I frequently use it to get to Amazon's affiliate pages, for example - weird URL which I've never gotten around to bookmarking, but you can get straight there by searching "amazon associates."

So, I guess I do use it - but I use it knowing that there really are better ways of getting there.