I did a Google Maps search for “GetGo Gas” in the DC area — and the results weren’t quite what I expected.
Instead of getting a list of GetGo gas stations owned by Giant Eagle (more on that later), I got a politically-laden list of what some people may think are the usual suspects engaged in an on-going program of acquiring gas elsewhere:
- The White House
- The Federal Bureau of Investigations
- Federal News Service
- Pew Forum on Religion and Public
- Congressman John Conyers Jr.
- Washington Post
- US Executive Mansion
- Democratic National Committee
- US Government: Public Affairs
- Libertarian National Committee
Experimenting with different combinations of these words (”go get gas,” “goget gas”, and “get go gas”) brings up different rankings with different individuals and agencies, including Union Station, National Reform - Marijuana Laws, National Press, Senator Tom Harkin, Republican National Committee, and other innocent (or not so innocent) parties.
And why was I looking for GetGo gas stations? The Giant Eagle chain of grocery stores has an excellent FuelPerks program where, for each $50 of groceries you purchase through your Giant Eagle Advantage card, you save 10 cents on each gallon of gas you purchase at Giant Eagle and GetGo gas stations. After a particularly productive series of shopping sprees, we were able to get gas for something like $1.39 per gallon (down from $3.25 per gallon).
Can’t beat that. Unless another grocery store offers a similar program. Or, better yet, perhaps one of these politically-linked organizations offers a steeper discount? Hmm.
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Full kudos to Google Maps! :) Wasn’t it Earth Day yesterday, perhaps Google took it a bit further than the black screen search page! :)
On a serious note, I wish respect administrations would take climate change a bit more seriously.
Hi Alison - I think Earth Day is April 22 or thereabouts. Earth HOUR from 8-9pm was Saturday’s event.
What do Washingtonians do for Earth Day? Fill me in…
Yep, we observed Earth Hour last Saturday night. Well, that is, SOME of us observed Earth Hour. My household went dark during that hour except for one light — hey, I needed some light to fold laundry by. But just about all the other houses on my block still had their lights on, sigh.
This looks like a bug, not a feature, to me.
This may be an example of a “Google Bomb” (whether intentional or not) — or how people try to make as many links to a certain webpage using certain keywords so that Google would rank that webpage higher when searching for those keywords.
In the past, searching for “miserable failure” on Google would bring up George W. Bush’s White House bio website. This was the result of a concerted effort by some people to bring Bush’s website up to the top of this search result. This is the best example of a Google Bomb.
Google has since then changed its search algorithm so that it’s not so easy to do a Google Bomb. More info here:
http://searchengineland.com/070125-230048.php