Archive for April 15th, 2007

2 results.
Apr15

Comparing Kirking on Ask, Google, and Live

by tdaxp on April 15, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Blogosphere, SLAPP

Comparing Kirking on Ask, Google, and Live

Brittney over at Nashville is Talking gave a good timeline of how the JL Kirk & Associates scandal started:

1. Katherine Coble writes opinionated blog entry about her bad service at an employment agency, JL Kirk & Associates.

2. Subject of initial blog entry leaves long comment on said post defending herself and her company.

3. Coble reposts the comment as a post of its own, with a refutation responding.

4. Coble receives certified letter from King & Ballow on behalf of JL Kirk & Associates insisting that she remove any blog entries about the employment agency. She has two days to comply or they say they will sue for “tortuous interference and other damages.”

Early on, I noted how most of the first three pages of Google Results for J. L. Kirk were by bloggers critical of the company’s practice of threatening lawsuits against critics. I wanted to see how the past few days had treated JL Kirk Associates on google, and how the company is standing on Google and Ask as well. So I searched, and this is what I found:




Category / Engine Ask Google Live
JL Kirk Associates 15 3 28
Critical of Kirk 3 27 1
Other Kirks 12 0 1

The first 2 criticisms on Ask.com appeared to be from two years ago. Only was was relevant to the recent bruhaha. The last is to a TV station (WKRN 2 Nashville) report on the issue. Ask also had 12 irrelevant search results, that had nothing to do with JL Kirk and Associates.

LIve.com was even worse, with 28 of the first 30 results being for JL Kirk Associates (generally somedomain.jlkirkassociates.com). The only result critical of the company in the first three pages was this blog (www.tdaxp.com)!. (The irrelevent page was to an R.J. Roda Kirk, sculptor.)

Google’s search results were most representative of the blogosphere. Only three pages (two at www.jlkirkassociates.com, one ad www.bestofiowa.com) pushed Kirk’s message. There were no irrelevent links, and 27 negative pages. Additionally, several pages critical of J.L. Kirk are new since the last time I checked:

My conclusion? Google is most reflective of user opinions, Live.com is unable to realize that all domains with jlkirkassociates.com in them are owned by JL Kirk Associates, and Ask somehow thinks that scientific articles written years ago that just-so-happen to have “J,” “L,” and “Kirk” in them are more relevant than user reviews of the company, and almost as important as the corporation’s own webpages.

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Apr15

An Odd Dream

by tdaxp on April 15, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Vanity

I dreamt I was on a game show similar to the Amazing Race. We were in the United States, in a small town that seemed very familiar. I thought I knew the name of the town in the dream, but now that I am awake I cannot place it.

We needed a ride to someplace in the country, but we did not have our own transportation and it looked hard to arrange it. Somehow we spied my grandfather there, and the task ended up having nothing to do with in the countryside. My grandfather could either redecorate a a building to look like a schoolhouse/courtroom (I knew the task’s name in the dream, but can’t remember it know. Something like “Legal Eagle” or something), or else my grandfather could do another task across the street at the whitewashed firehall. My grandpa started walking at an angle across the state, but I saw that it was hard for him to walk so encouraged him to do the task that was nearer.

The room was dark as he started working, but as it continued the room became well lit.

He went to work, and we were about done before the other team arrived. I went across the room to a stage/closet (I can’t remember if it changed in the dream or I merely walked from one to the other) to airbrush some paint. We were done, and I say my aunt and her granddaughter (my cousin). My cousin and I recited the Hail Mary (the only words of the whole dream I remember, and which was odd as neither are Catholic). We were asked to stay for dinner, but we responded that we had to continue with the race.

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