Just wondering…
January 29th, 2011I was at Amazon.com, looking at the search results that come up for the Kindle store when my name is searched. (Not ego surfing! Business!) At the bottom of the page I saw the following ad:
Naturally I wondered who was using my name as a sponsored link.
I clicked to open the link in a new tab. This is what I saw:
Okay, so this textbook was written by another Linda Nagata! So I went back to Amazon and pulled up the page for the textbook and this is what I saw:
Notice there is no author name of “Linda Nagata” attached to this book. But there is an author name “Linda Webb”–which just happens to be my maiden name, but which I have never used as a pen name. Coincidence? I sure hope so, because otherwise this is creeping me out.
I don’t mention this here out of vanity or because I’m impressed that my name is well known for selling stuff (quite the contrary, I assure you!) but because it’s just so weird. Explain? Please?
Posted on: Saturday, January 29th, 2011 at 9:52 pm
Categories: Meanderings.
January 29th, 2011 at 10:27 pm
Googling for [ linda webb nagata ] turns up “about 1,510”, many of the first few look something like “Linda Nagata. (Linda Webb)” (and one is even this posting, is Google quick or what). I can’t quite get my mind around it, but suspect that Amazon computers are somehow confused over the (non-)equivalence of Linda Webb == Linda Nagata.
So I’d recommend bringing this up to the Amazon staff. You know, computers never make misteaks [_sic._], but the same can’t be said for those who program them.
I always tell my customers that software is perfect; it does exactly what we tell it to do, which might not be quite what we had in mind….
January 29th, 2011 at 10:53 pm
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Toby Neal, Linda Nagata. Linda Nagata said: Weird name stalking in "sponsored links" has left me confused: http://hahvi.net/?p=367 […]
January 29th, 2011 at 11:43 pm
That could be it. My first thought was that the landing page was just writing in whatever variable was in the name field so the user would think the book was by an author of interest, but when tested in another browser, that wasn’t the case. I did fill out the ad complaint form, fwiw.