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March 20, 2009

More Famous than Del's and the Big Blue Bug?

Justin Katz

The blog on General Treasurer Frank Caprio's Web site lists the number of references captured by Google for familiar Rhode Island names. As the post admits, results change each day, but the only way I can even come close to duplicating the numbers is to leave off the quotation marks, without which Google will return any page that has every word in any order, for some and include them for others. So, without quotation marks, a search for the Big Blue Bug will tally every page that has the words big, blue, and bug anywhere on them.

Out of curiosity, I've recreated the list using the quotation marks:

  • Rhode Island: 110,000,000
  • State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations: 153,000
  • Rhode Island and Buddy Cianci: 16,800
  • Buddy Cianci: 40,900
  • Roger Willams and Rhode Island: 571
  • Del's Lemonade: 12,400
  • Coffee milk: 394,000
  • Clam cake: 2,990
  • Salty Brine: 48,600
  • Bruce Sundlun: 7,230
  • Big Blue Bug: 7,930
  • Ruth Buzzi: 70,600
  • James Woods: 1,060,000
  • Quahog: 430,000

Anchor Rising, for those keeping score, returns 28,500 results.