A new search engine launched this last week, and this time (for once) it’s not being hailed as a Google Killer. The website is Mystery Google, and it uses the Google branding, perhaps unwisely, offering searchers the opportunity for some genuinely random searches. Mystery Google doesn’t give you results based on your search, but instead on the search of the person who used the website before you.
This means that when you search on Mystery Google, you’ll be getting results that are completely unrelated to your search… much like using Bing we imagine.
Mystery Google isn’t a search engine as such, it’s a portal that leads into Google’s SERPs, and is even supported with Google Adsense advertising. It’s not known (but no would be a fairly safe guess) whether Mystery Google has any real connections to Google, and according to the Telegraph Google has refused to comment.
So what use is Mystery Google for Internet users? Firstly, it’s a bit of fun, and as we mentioned offers results to queries that are probably just as relevant as using Bing. Secondly, it’s a great example of link bait as it has attracted many high quality links from reputable websites, including the Telegraph.
Mystery Google isn’t perfect though (as if you thought it was) as some searches are deemed too short to provide any results for. For example, a search on ‘SEO’ yielded no results.
Also, the site has already been attacked by spammers, with the following ‘chain response’ coming up repeatedly:
if you read this, copy and paste it into mystery google to reuse for the next victim.if you read this, copy and paste it into mystery google to reuse for the next victim.if you read this, copy and paste it into mystery google to reuse for the next victim.
Perhaps with a few tweaks Mystery Google might be more entertaining; it could even tempt Microsoft into an offer for its search technology!
- New report hints how content can be successful - June 19, 2018
- Improve your web presence with help from Google - April 18, 2018
- Complementing your content marketing strategy with email - March 7, 2018
Love this. I think there should be more ‘mystery pages’. How about mystery Twitter which see’s your feed steal random updates from other users or mystery Ebay that starts putting bids in on random goods for you? I think this could catch on…
This is pretty cool. I think I killed it with spam tho.
There already is a mystery eBay Craig, it’s called eBay and every few weeks I receive emails with the dreaded subject line that begins ‘Congratulations’ causing me to fear what I’ve bought now while browsing late at night. 🙂