This is why I have a website.

So that I when I REALLY REALLY WANT TO KICK A PIECE OF FURNITURE, but must avoid doing so,in order to save myself from having to buy new furniture and/or a new foot, I can write a smart-arsed article/rant until I calm down (and actually usually run out of steam and don’t finish the article)

Anyway, before the steam goes, the reason I started on this particular rant, is something I’ve come across before, and actually seems to be getting more prevalent.

I just did a search on Google for the terms:

smbmount follow symlinks

as I was having trouble connecting to the music share on my Mac Mini. Instantly, good old Google came up with a set of results, as it usually does, and the top one was from Ubuntu Forums. “Yeeha!” I thought to myself. No, not actually “Yeeha!” at all, “Sheise!”, in fact. You see, Googles algorithm had decided that the single most important document on the entire internet, related to those three terms was…

A question asked on Ubuntu forums about the same problem I had, to which no-one had replied.

WTF?! How can Googles page-rank™ algorithm, rank an unanswered question at the very top of it’s results? Page-rank is supposed to weight the importance of a page, by the importance (via page-rank again(oh no recursion)) of the pages that link to it.

Who the feck links to an unanswered question on a forum from their website? People showing examples of how not to answer questions? A meta-loneliness list?

I’d chalk it down as just a little Google oddity if I didn’t see it happen too regularly to be just dumb luck. More and more (admittedly on the esoteric side) tech related queries end up with the number 1 result being the same bloody question you are trying to get answered.

Maybe Google just thinks that you’ll feel better knowing someone else shares your pain?

Ah, what the hell. My angers gone and now I just feel silly for thumping the keys at the start of the post.