Wednesday, February 1, 2012

A new (odd?) search engine result

I frequently Google my own street in order to access a neighborhood map for various purposes (if you check out previous posts, you can see many graphics showing Centerpointe relative to other geographic features).

This morning when I did this, what returned as the top hit was not the usual Googlemaps link or anything close to it - it was a list of individual windstorm certificates published by Texas Department of Insurance.

Screengrabbed from:
https://apps.tdi.state.tx.us/windstormsearch/search_ctrl.jsp?searchCity=&searchCounty=&searchStreet=arl&searchAddNum=7%25

Not all properties are listed here, but as I proceeded to access links, more addresses appeared on the list, as if maybe the database was being populated in real time. 
 What surprises me is NOT that this information is ON the internet, because EVERYTHING is ending up on the internet these days.  What surprises me is that it was the top-ranked hit in Google.  Usually websites migrate to the top of the Google heap because they are the most popular, with the greatest number of user clicks.  Who on earth would care to access this information such that it rises to the top??  I don't know... it might be destined to remain one of the great mysteries of the web. 
From http://www.tdi.texas.gov/wind/maps/index.html
The reason for our relatively high insurance rates. 

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