Random but Awesome

Submitted by Ernis on

Just randomly discovered that if you do a Google search for "U", the University of Michigan homepage is the first result.

Eat it, 'Canes

Mitch Cumstein

April 4th, 2010 at 10:40 PM ^

I get the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Delaware as my first two. With "U" in Wikipedia bringing up third

EDIT: My guess is there is a locational bias to the search algorithm.

A Sexy Otter

April 4th, 2010 at 10:48 PM ^

I don't know about the geographic bias in the search. I am in Columbus, Ohio (Yeah, I know) and I spend a SHIT TON of time on Michigan sites so I don't know why my results would show Minnesota first.

Sambojangles

April 4th, 2010 at 11:25 PM ^

Yeah, Google is getting more and more into your personal computing habits in a borderline creepy way. I hope the government or terrorists hack into Google's servers. I might be in trouble.

Don't even ask.

Mr. Robot

April 4th, 2010 at 11:43 PM ^

Followed by the page of letter itself at Wikipedia, a page on the HTML code for "u", corresponding video results, the yuri board at 4chan*, random search thing with bad WOT ratings, the University of Utah, and the University of Minnesota, in that order.

*I DO NOT, nor will I EVER go to 4chan. I attribute its appearance on the page to my roommates, as we obviously all share the same connection.

Edit: I'm not sure if this counts, but actually the first "result" is a Google converter thing telling me that 1 Rack Unit is equal to 4.445 centimeters.

MGoShoe

April 5th, 2010 at 10:42 AM ^

...According to Wikipedia (definitely SFW):

A rack unit or U (less commonly, RU) is a unit of measure used to describe the height of equipment intended for mounting in a 19-inch rack or a 23-inch rack (The dimension refers to the width of the equipment mounting frame in the rack i.e. the width of the equipment that can be mounted inside the rack). One rack unit is 1.75 inches (44.45 mm) high. The size of a piece of rack mounted equipment is frequently described as a number in "U". For example, one rack unit is often referred to as "1U", 2 rack units as "2U" and so on.

OHbornUMfan

April 5th, 2010 at 8:01 AM ^

I love that some college teams play in stadia (yeah baby, Latin!) whose naming rights have been purchased - for example, Louisville plays in PapaJohn's Cardinal Stadium. Meanwhile, the University of Phoenix, which has no football team, HAS a football stadium. Awesome!

mgowin

April 5th, 2010 at 12:13 AM ^

I get wiki page on uranium, then the letter U wiki page. I live in Knoxville, Oak Ridge (Manhattan Project) is about 20 miles away. Def. regional bias.

BlueVoix

April 5th, 2010 at 12:37 AM ^

Hmm, I got:

-Wikipedia U
-Umich.edu
-Mgoblue
-Video results, including something called "super junior u mv"
-Cal University of Pennsylvania.

So only the last one, being that I'm in western Pennsylvania, makes sense for the geographical bias bit.

mblood7

April 5th, 2010 at 2:08 AM ^

I'm not buying the geo biased shit. I'm in northern michigan and got

U wiki
Univeristy of Utah
Stanford I-Tunes U

Looked for first michigan site sixth page. Mgoblog is my home page and over half my top visited sites are directly related to Michigan (mostly sprots) pages.

OHbornUMfan

April 5th, 2010 at 8:06 AM ^

notes in The World Is Flat that it is the job of some folks to figure out how to get their sites picked up the most quickliest by the Google search engine for given searches, and make adjustments accordingly. I'm sure that universities have folks whose daily goal is to do whatever is necessary to get their U as high in the "Google poll" as possible.