369: Dangers

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Dangers

Title text: Zero results: 'snake charming' and 'haberdashery'. (Things like 'car' and 'boating' and such are of course the highest, by a huge margin.)

Explanation

This comic is a chart of the frequency of certain phrases in Google search results, based on the format "died in a ______ accident." If you enclose search terms in quotation marks, Google will look up the exact phrase rather than the individual words in any order.

"Gardening accident" is a reference to the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, in which one of the band's many ill-fated drummers died in this fashion.

"Died in a blogging accident" was very rare in Google until this comic appeared. It could be found on over 10,000 webpages approximately 12 hours after the comic was posted. Similarly, both snake charming and haberdashery accidents also return hundreds of Google results.

Transcript

Dangers

Indexed by the number of Google results for

"Died in a _____ Accident"

[A bar chart showing "Type of Accident" vs "Google Results" each with a bar representing a number]

Skydiving: 710

Elevator: 575

Surfing: 496

Skateboarding: 473

Camping: 166

Gardening: 100

Ice Skating: 94

Knitting: 7

Blogging: 2

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Discussion

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22died+in+a+blogging+accident%22&biw=1366&bih=599&tbs=cdr:1,cd_max:1/10/2008&start=0&sa=N&filter=0 I seem to be incapable of finding any google search results before 10th of January 2008 featuring the phrase "Died in a blogging accident" that is not relevant to this XKCD comic. Weird.108.162.208.177 17:51, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Google now has 687000 results for "Died in a blogging accident", "can be found on over 10000 web pages" doesn't reflect that, but I wouldn't know which number to use for an edit :) 141.101.92.9 00:28, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I highly doubt the gardening search had anything to do with Spinal Tap. Gardening accidents are common. -- Flewk (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)