About Us

You are probably wondering who we are and why we made the site -- in particular, do we have any association with Google? I mean, how do you know this website wasn't put up by Google themselves? Or maybe Google hates us. Or maybe they don't care. Or maybe they love us -- they should... :) read on...

First off, we are not affiliated with Google, Inc. The truth is, I shouldn't even use the word "we" because I put this website up myself. Hi, my name is Wayne Radinsky. I'll tell you how I got the idea for the site. I used to live in Silicon Valley and I know a certain person who works at Google. One day I was saying, "I was looking on Google for something and no matter hard I tried I couldn't find it." And she was like, "Dude, tell me! I'm always interested in what people can't find on Google." Ok, I admit, she didn't use the word "Dude.". Then she says, "You should make a list." So I start making a list. My "Can't Find On Google" list.

And then I thought, "I oughta make a website so everyone can add to the list." And I did -- you're looking at it. This website is the whole world's "Can't find on Google" list.

So you're probably wondering, do the folks at Google look at this list? I imagine that they do -- along with AltaVista, AllTheWeb, AskJeeves and Teoma, Microsoft MSN, not to mention all the little search engine makers, like HotBot, Links2go, WebCrawler, Excite, Go, and the CIA World Factbook. Actually the CIA doesn't make a search engine, as far as I know. And I'm probably inflating my own ego thinking all those people read this site. But anyway, the point is, if you're Google, and you want to improve your search engine, you want to know real-life stuff people are looking for on Google, but can't find. That's why Google ought to love this site. And if you're a Google competitor, you want to know Google's weaknesses so you can get an edge on them.

At this point, you can probably see why you should post the stuff you can't find on this website -- because you're helping all the search engine companies improve their search technology -- including Google. And you'll profit from that in the future, when you can use the technology improvements and find more stuff. And besides that, it's just fun to see what Google can't find -- precisely because Google is so incredibly good at finding stuff.

Now you're probably wondering, if this site isn't affiliated with Google, how did I get a logo that looks so similar to Google's? It's simple. I just typed "Can't Find On Google" into The Google Logo Maker. In fact, I had a problem because the word "Google" in "Can't Find On Google" was the Google logo. Not just similar but exactly the same. The folks at the Google Logo Maker site did too good a job. So I reversed all the colors. Hopefully now the "Can't Find On Google" logo is different enough from the Google logo to keep me out of trouble. It's different except for color-blind people. Actually red-green color blind people can probably still see the difference. That's the most common form of color-blindness. But I'm getting too technical here...

As the site has grown, we've gotten a lot of spam and useless junk. You can help get rid of it by clicking on the "Spam/Junk" links whenever you see the stuff. But not only can you flag the bad stuff, you can flag the good stuff by clicking the links that say "Interesting". Of course, I have no idea what consitutes an "interesting" question that can't be answered by Google -- whatever you think is interesting is interesting. This way, we can find the most interesting questions that can't be answered by Google.

A lot of people are using the site to answer questions posted by others. Here's how you can, too: If you know something, post a response. If you want to know the answer, or just want to follow the conversation, click "Subscribe". "Subscribe" will give you an "email subscription" to an entry -- all future responses will be sent to you in email. Of course, I have to mention that if you really want to know the answer to a question, you can pay a few bucks on Google Answers and have an expert answer it for you.

In addition, I made a categorization system. The system is simple: when you post an entry, you can specify a category for it. After you post it, other people can attach their own category labels to your entry. So of course, you can attach category labels to other people's entries, too. Just click "Add category". (If you're familiar with a "tagging" system, like Del.icio.us or Flickr, the system here is similar, except here you can put spaces in the category names, and you separate them with commas instead of spaces.) Why does it work this way? Because I didn't have any idea how "Can't Find On Google" entries ought to be categorized. So I've basically thrown the problem back at you. So now it's your job to figure out how to categorize stuff. I'm sure I'll be surprised by what you all come up with.

I managed to get this far without mentioning the language features. This site now supports Unicode and all the languages that Google itself supports. Of course, the user interface for the site itself is still in English. But if you can deal with the English interface, you can post stuff in other languages. Some languages, like those that use right-to-left text, like arabic or hebrew, or asian languages, like chinese, might not display correctly until someday in the future when the whole user interface is translated into that language.

Finally, there is now a "Suggestion Box". This is where you get to tell me what new features you want on the site. You can either post them publicly, and let others vote and comment on them, or send them privately to me. Some things, like bug reports, should be private to me. Oh, I should mention: postings to the Suggestion Box should be in English. It's the only language I understand. You can post "Can't Find On Google" entries and responses (and category labels) in any language you like.

Always remember, wherever you go: If you can't find it on Google, post it on CantFindOnGoogle.com! Do you know anybody else who uses Google? Tell them if they can't find something on Google, post it on CantFindOnGoogle.com!