Googling Greenspan

Not having performed this simple search in quite some time, it was a bit of a shock to see this humble blog show up in seventh place (or eighth, depending upon the time of day or who knows what).

Unlike the mysterious search algorithms employed at MSN or Live or whatever they call it now, where rankings as high as first or second were seen last year, the search below is a Google search - the real thing - the one where they name a verb after the company that invented it, like Xerox.

Naturally Wikipedia comes in first and the "other" Doctor Greenspan, Stanley, the practicing child psychiatrist and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Behavioral Sciences, and Pediatrics at George Washington University Medical School - he's been near the top of the list ever since the first search was done here years ago.

And The Greenspan Company / Adjusters International? What the heck are they doing there? There used to be a blog called Sir Alan Greenspan of which these pages (here and here) appear to be remnants. The author has apparently lost interest - is that what a Blogger blog looks like when it is abandoned and Google reclaims the disk space?

But seventh place is pretty good.

Another query done just a moment ago shows an eighth place result with text from a different post - the one above was from last week's two-year anniversary post while the one below was from yesterday's April Fools fun though they both point to the main page of the blog.

They probably know what they're doing there at Google.

These search results do prompt an interesting question. What, if anything, should be done if the Maestro's book publisher wrote and asked for the Greenspan material to be removed as did a representative of privately held lender Bryco Funding some time ago - What to do with the Bryco Post?

Hopefully it won't come to that but there does appear to be something going on there with the Google search algorithm that could potentially be exploited to coincide with the book release this fall.

That's an idea.

According to the initial story on the book deal last spring, Penguin Press has already advanced the former Fed Chief $8.5 million, which might explain why he's been in the news so much lately - creating buzz for the book.

Hmmm...