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ssl-3 • today at 4:00 PM • 0 replies • view on HN

I wanted to find a specific web-published story that I'd read years ago.

I knew the website (and it's old; it predates the term "blog"). I knew the context. I just didn't know the URL and I didn't want to page through entries manually like some antediluvian pleb.

So I used a search engine; I Googled it.

Zero results. Nothing. The search terms were common and there should have been thousands or millions of hits, which I would then be able pare down with better terms until my desired result was near the top. But there was nothing.

Zero response from the Google bot, too.

(The lack of bot response isn't unusual; the subject matter involved a man on a balcony and his gentleman sausage, and Google's bot tends to avoid non-Puritanical concepts. But the Google search engine of Not So Long Ago, Really would've been very pleased to present results that match the terms.)