Monday, July 13, 2009

The Paris Hilton Search Paradox




Everyone who ever had a professional encounter with search engines is familiar with the Paris Hilton Search Engine Paradox.

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, in short - think about what happens if you decide to go to Paris, you want to stay at the Paris Hilton, and decide to look it up on Google to find good deals or whatever. You immediately become a victim of the paradox because if you run "the paris hilton" in Google, most of the results you'll get will be for Miss Paris Hilton.
The Paris Hilton search engine paradox refers to the problem search engine programmers have when they need to figure out what the person was really looking for when a search phrase is very ambiguous. The case of Paris Hilton is particularly problematic, since Paris Hilton is really a sibling of the Hilton family, owners the hotel chain. Hence, even the search phrase "Paris Hilton Hotel" may still mean that someone is interested in the lady and not the city (since she is the inheritor of the hotel chain). It would be extremely difficult, probably impossible, to figure out what a person meant without knowing a bit more about the person, the context, or something else. It would, however, not be very morale to provide search results based on profiling the person (it's a 14 year old male - must be interested in the Paris, the girl, because they cannot afford the hotel and because of other reasons I can't write here ;) ).

Aaaaaanyways, I got carried away with this post - what I really wanted to share with you is this Saturday Night Live sketch my brother sent me, which noticeably took this paradox to different place: Enjoy.

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