RKG Logo 434-978-4300

Yesterday, Danny Sullivan, Threadwatch, Blogoscope and others got pulled in by a joke job posting for human search query responders at Microsoft.

Two comments: first, its refreshing to see the folks at MS have a sense of humor; and second, when the blogosphere errs, it self-corrects amazingly fast.

With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow applies to open-source news, too.

If you missed it, here’s the job posting:

Hand crafted results

When all else fails, and the ranking algorithms do not pass the confidence threshold, we fall back to delivering handcrafted results. Working on a team of approximately 132 other handcrafters in 26 worldwide markets, you will receive a user query, use all the available search engines to quickly scour the web for results, pick the top 10 results for this query, and send it on to the user. Successful handcrafters can typically find top 10 results for a real-time user’s query in less than 3.8 seconds. This is an opportunity to truly connect with customers, because the queries that get routed to you are precisely the ones that the engine cannot answer well. We will have adequate staffing to allow generous coffee and bathroom breaks.
If you are an expert at using at least 3 different search engines, well versed with American English/colloquial usage, and can type at > 149 words/minute as measured by the Simia-Lico method – come join us and delight users real-time!

(from the fake MS job posting)

If you like this post, consider subscribing to our RSS feed. You can also have new posts sent to you via email.


Related Posts

    No related posts.

No Comments Yet

Your comment will be first!

Your Comment

Tags

RKG

Trackback

http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2006/06/15/2500-high-school-kids-in-the-back-room-typing-150-wpm/trackback/

Email Updates

Categories

Recent Comments

  • Mark Ballard: Cory, I don’t see this as an SEO v. PPC issue. The core of my argument is that CTRs are lower primarily due to misleading...
  • Cory Grassell: What are your thoughts on stats that suggest consumers are more apt to click on organic search results than PPC results? As a...
  • George Michie: Kevin, Marc, thanks for your comments. Help is coming, but not the solution. There are a number of instances when the CTR on the...
  • Marc Adelman: George, You have been an advocate of “the advanced control option” for years now. Depressing right YEARS! Eh…listen...
  • Kevin Hill: Is what they really need is a fourth match type. Here’s google’s help documentation on broad match: This is the default...
  • Kevin Micalizzi, Dimdim Web Conferencing: Jim (& George)- We still offer a free version of Dimdim. Just click Sign Up Now at the top of the...
  • Tomas: indeed, i can’t talk about it either… :)
  • Philip Price: Thank you for the RegHack, it worked for me, tho at first when i made the reg file with the information i copied from above i also...
  • George Michie: Sorry Jim, this post was written in 2007. Apparently some of those products are gone.
  • Jim: Hey, I checked two products like dimdim and cutepdf but none is free. What are you talking about free and open source?
  • George Michie: If they keep hearing the same message, and seeing evidence in the data to back it up, something will have to give. There is hope on...
  • Tomas: I’ve been having the same argument with Google for months now and in the end there does seem to be a feature in the algorithm that...
  • George Michie: Doesn’t have to be, it can be intra-adgroup as well.
  • Josh: George – I take it you’re referencing a scenario where your exact-match keywords are not listed as negative exact match keywords...
  • George Michie: Melissa, you’re right, it’s always happened to varying degrees, particularly since the advent of extended broad match....

Blog Stats

  • Posts: 948
  • Words: 451,089
  • Comments: 2,877

Administration