The fact that the term “Artflux” is showing up in Google Hot Trends is certainly odd. It didn’t take me very long to figure out the reason why thanks to this post from Technology Watch. Looks like they spotted that the long trusted Interwebs are now broken. We knew this day would come. Surely, the end is near. If Google is broken, what’s next?

It seems that if you search for “artflux” in Google, and click on the third listing (for artflux.com) nothing happens. The search result page just reloads and you’re right back at the results. You might ask, “how on earth did anyone figure this out?” There’s a simple answer. There is a team of “they” that sit around all day an randomly check search result page links. You know…”they”…as in “they say that drinking bleach is bad for you” or “they say that global warming will make all our coastlines disappear” or “they say the Internet is mostly porn.” Sure, sometimes “they” are right and they certainly appear to be experts in everything, and “they” seem to get around. In their quest to be experts on everything, “they” must have stumbled upon this little glitch. Amazing that a resource like this exists.

Sure, you’re probably saying that the people who own artflux.com noticed this and, like the rest of the world, posted it on a blog somewhere complaining that they weren’t getting their usual 100 visitors a month. The power of the Internets must have picked this story up and spread it far and wide. Sure, that would make sense, but isn’t my explanation just better on so many levels?

If there’s a glitch here, though, it does make you wonder where other glitches might exist. As your intrepid leader, always seeking to create the most complete story, I did some investigating and found glitch after glitch. Here’s where I found some similar glitches:

“creamed spinach” page 12, result 5

“camouflage parachute pants” page 3, result 9

“horse tranquilizers” page 6, result 2

“scented markers” page 15, result 7

“shark urine” page 2, result 4

As you can see from these run of the mill, typical searches, Google has some major problems. I run these searches all the time and I’m now a little worried that I haven’t been getting all the information that Google once appeared to deliver. I shall petition Google at once to have this corrected.

Remarkably, Google hasn’t fixed the “artflux” error yet despite there being a fair amount of geek buzz (myself included) about it. This tells me that, one: Google doesn’t care, two: they aren’t an Empire-like evil force, as they could have simply made artflux.com and any story about it disappear and no one would have known.

Perhaps, though, when Google opens this morning and someone turns on their computer, they’ll decide to destroy us all in which case you’ll never see this post. That’s sad. Sorry you missed it.

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Posted on May 28th, 2008 by Jonathan - Everyone But You
Filed under: google

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