[markbnj]

>> Some time ago I tried to find information about Crocodiles, the animals. Instead, I got results about Crocs shoes and zero information about the actual crocodiles.

I just entered 'crocodile' into Google search while signed into my normal private account, and got a ton of useful information about crocodiles. Shoes were nowhere to be found in the first 30 or 40 results that I scanned. I don't know if the OP is using a different search engine that is more blatant about ads.

[Gunax]

This might be a bad example, since crocs and crocodiles are different words. But in some regions, 'croc' is used much more often than 'crocodile' in the same way that Americans say 'sitcom' much more often than 'situational comedy'. Even though it's an abbreviation, it's eclipsed the full word in frequency.

But I think the author's general point isn't about the information being unavailable (even if croc was the whole word, you can just write 'croc animal') but about the internet being engineered as a distraction machine. He didn't set out to look for shoes--but once they were presented, suddenly he found himself shoe shopping despite having no internet in purchasing shoes.

[markbnj]

Fair enough, and yeah searching for 'crocs' unsurprisingly returns a boatload of shoe results. This is a broader issue I think, in that coming up with good search terms that are likely to return the results you need is a bit of a skill.

[whoooooo123]

Is there anywhere in the English-speaking world where people say "situational comedy" instead of "sitcom"? I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "situational comedy" once in my life, unless they were answering the question "what is sitcom short for?"

[Kye]

Useful data:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=s...

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sitcom%2C+situ...

It looks like sitcom ran in parallel below situation comedy from the start, then sitcom took over with the boom in the 1980s. Situation comedy never went away, but it never came close once they diverged.

[duxup]

I searched Crocodiles on YouTube, lots of good quality results that I saw.

[skeeter2020]

the OP probably searched for 'Crocs'. Even DDG floods the front page with the footwear. I'm not sure this is a great example.

[chrisseaton]

> the OP probably searched for 'Crocs'

Why would you do that when searching for crocodiles?

[ghaff]

Because it's shorter and is a common term for crocodiles in various places where they're common.

[chrisseaton]

Not sure it’s reasonable to search an international search engine with a regional slang and then complain when it doesn’t recognise it.

[criddell]

It is when that search engine has been telling you for 20+ years to let them collect all your data because in exchange you get personalized search results.

[ghaff]

I don't disagree. As soon as I started typing I would realize that crocs would probably turn up the shoe. However, to the degree that people routinely use regionalisms, it's easy to see why they might use them reflexively. Of course, it's also easy to see why a search engine might not return the results they expect.

[FalconSensei]

it's also the exact name of a famous brand of footwear