Billboards

Posted byRandall 347 Comments on Billboards

There’s some strange text on billboards around New York. I passed these four this weekend:

THE ALGORITHM CONSTANTLY FINDS JESUS
THE ALGORITHM KILLED JEEVES
THE ALGORITHM IS BANNED IN CHINA
THE ALGORITHM IS FROM JERSEY

It’s clearly a viral marketing campaign and seems to be by Ask.com. I like puzzles like this, but at the moment it doesn’t seem to go anywhere — if you Google it, you just get blogs talking about the odd billboards. That’s not really very much fun.

It occurs to me that the sort of people who would be curious enough to go to Google and type them in are probably the sort of people who would like xkcd, so maybe we should create a twist in the puzzle. For those of you who have blogs or other sites, feel free to create links to xkcd.com with those billboard lines as the link text. I put the phrases at the bottom of xkcd.com so it won’t be filtered out as a Googlebomb.

347 replies on “Billboards”

  3. do you find it at all odd that you saw a viral marketing campaign for ask search, and went to google to find out more?

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  5. Ask.com have currently got a bunch of adverts around the London Underground train system pointing at the website http://information-revolution.org/ and claiming that “most people have stopped searching for better search”… It seems to me to be a last ditch effort on the part of Ask.com before they go out of business 😛

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  7. THE ALGORITHM CONSTANTLY FINDS VELOCIRAPTORS
    THE ALGORITHM IS RED SPIDERS AND RED SPIDERS IS THE ALGORITHM
    THE ALGORITHM MAKES ME A SANDWICH
    THE ALGORITHM BECAME USELESS FINDING THE RATE OF CHANGE OF LOVE WITH RESPECT TO X

    …the algorithm would make a good blog entry, wouldn’t it?

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  8. I saw those on my drive up to CT this weekend. However, I forgot to google them. I almost always see something I want to google when I drive a long distance, and also almost always forget to actually do it.

    I think the driving world may be the only place in my life completely seperated from the internet.

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  9. You Googled them? Then surely the internet is coming to an end!! You need to visit Ask.com, quick!

    Also…

    THIS ALGORITHM IS SO GOOD IT DOESN’T NEED VIRAL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS!

    The “information revolution” campaign is awful in every way.

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  10. Pingback: elliptical . . . : Blog Archive : xkcd hearts the algorithm
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  15. Hijacking a viral marketing campaign.

    I find your ideas intriguing, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

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  16. You haven’t gotten to the top on the first two yet, but the others you’re getting up there.

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  17. Pingback: The Algorithm « This is a test

  19. As near as I can figure, if you put these phrases into Google, you get a bunch of people talking about the ads–but if you put them into Ask.com, you get references to Jesus, or “banned in China” or whatever the second half of the phrase is. So maybe the point of the ad campaign is to show that Google is subject to manipulation that can prevent you from finding what you want to know about, by deliberately creating confusing phrases that people talk about on blogs. Basically, we’re spamming Google and enhancing Ask’s algorithm just by having this conversation.

    If that’s what it is, it’s pretty pointless, because people inputting those phrases right now are probably more interested in the ad campaign than, say, Jesus, and thus even a blog wondering about the ad campaign is, in fact, closer to what the user was looking for than actual information on Jesus.

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  22. I think the driving world may be the only place in my life completely seperated from the internet.

    One of my friends up in New England is, thanks to the various wireless/cellular devices tucked into his clothing, a walking access point. I didn’t quite appreciate this until he opened my laptop and checked something on Wikipedia while we were going down the highway at 65 MPH.

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  25. I played with it on Ask.com, and as far as I’m concerned, The Algorithm Can’t Find The Algorithm Can’t Find The Algorithm Can’t Find The Algorithm Can’t Find The Algorithm Can’t Find… ad infinitum.

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  26. Pingback: one of me » the home of paul turnbull » Blog Archive » THE ALGORITHM CONSTANTLY FINDS VELOCIRAPTORS

  27. Haha, nice! Of course the proper way to hijack a viral marketing scheme would be to not mention the actual source in the comments section. Otherwise the ad is still working as intended, and drawing people to the site.

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  28. @Alex: Or is it? Because while yes, we still mention the source, we’re also pretty much shunning it by using Google instead.

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  32. All around the London and Tower Bridge area of London there is grafitti on corners that says simply “The Alphabet of Brooke Shields”.

    Why?

    I dont know!

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  36. Pingback: Geoff Arnold » Blog Archive » Viral experiment

  37. I, too, found it odd that you googled an ask.com add. it’s definitely weird. you should make a comic about it when it’s resolved. 😀

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  39. My apologies. Let’s just start over.

    I, too, found it odd that you googled an ask.com AD. it’s definitely weird. you should make a comic about it when it’s resolved. 😀

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  40. Ask.com have a lot of ads on trains and stuff claiming some sort of “information revolution” with some sort of apparently grass-roots campaign against one organisation “controlling” our information sources. It’s pretty pathetic.

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  41. You’re first with THE ALGORITHM KILLED JEEVES, fifth with CONSTANTLY FINDS JESUS, third with IS FROM JERSEY, and fifth with IS BANNED IN CHINA. All with quotes.

    We’ll get there.

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  42. Even better: Folks, when you do these searches, CLICK the XKCD link when your resuls aredisplayed. Make sure google knows what to look for!

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  43. Pingback: Ogre :: xkcd

  45. If anyone had the power to control our information, Google would be that someone. Organization. But seriously, telling yourself that there’s no way that they would keep information from us advances nothing.

    Be suspicious of Google, Ask, Hotbot, Lycos, and anyone else that stands between you and information. Act as if they would hide information from you. If you act as if they wouldn’t, you are helpless.

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  47. “The Ask.com algorithm’s relevance methodology goes beyond the popularity focus of Google, Yahoo and MSN’s, and is the only one to break the Web down into topic clusters and determine community-based relevance in real time.”

    That makes perfect sense…

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  48. You’re first with “killed jeeves” and “from Jersey”
    You’re 4th with “China”
    You’re 6th with “Jesus”

    We need to work harder on the last two!

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  49. I, too, found it odd that you googled an ask.com ad.

    I didn’t know it was a campaign by Ask.com until I searched, of course. 🙂

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