Ask the masters: “Does the word “commonism” already exist? -Internet and Google search advice

By: Heleen

On: October 13, 2006

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-At the bottom of this post, you can find interesting links which explain the meaning of commonism-
We have received a question from Mieke Gerritsen, who has made a beautiful graphic design with the word “Commonism” on it. She has made this design and wondered if the word “Commonism” is already being used in one way or another.

Well to answer this in a new media kind of way: the best way to find out whether a word already exist is to use the word as a search string in google. When I typed commonism in google, I received 9110 results. The strange thing is, however, that this morning I searched at google.nl as well and I received nearly 9500 results, so apparently the search machine has been updated and broken links have been removed?

An interesting thing about Google is, that it automatically directs a user to the google website of this users home country. So when I type www.google.com, I get automatically directed to www.google.nl. However, at the bottom of the homepage, you have the option to visit “google.com in English” and when you doubleclick on this option you get directed to the english Google page.

Even more interesting: when I used “commonism” as a search string in google.com I received only 954 results! And Google also gave me the suggestion (at the top of the page) “Did you mean commUnism”. I did not receive this suggestion at google.nl! If you further investigate the difference in results, one may expect that there are so many more results in the Dutch google, because most results lead to websites or articles that are in Dutch. However, this is not true. When you fill out the search string “commonism” and use the option “only select pages from the netherlands”, I receive just 6 results!

Personally I cannot explain why there are so many more results in google.nl. But it does show that google.nl and google.com do not give the same results. Therefore it is wise to use both search engines when you are searching for something specific. If you cannot find it on the first google search engine, perhaps you can find it on the next.

Another way to find articles or websites about a certain topic, is the del.ico.us bookmark database. This database website replaces the bookmark option on your computer. It is a collaborative website, where people can add interesting links to the database. Other people can use these bookmarks to find interesting websites about the topic that they are interested in. In del.icio.us I found 5 links to websites with the tag “commonism”. (the results can be found at the bottom of this post). (And of course this website is a great way for people to organize their bookmarkt online, so they are available wherever they have an internet connection)

There is another way to find out what a certain word means, and that is to visit the wikipedia website and see if you can find the word on this collaborative online encyclopidia. I have searched the word on both the english and the Dutch part of this encyclopedia and I could not find it on either. The word is known on the English wikipedia, but strangely enough you get redirected to “communism” and in the rest of this entry you cannot find any reference to commonism. Concluding: the word is not know in the wikipedia website. (Another easy way to get to the wikipedia entry at once it use the search string “commonism wikipedia” at google!)
But anyway, if you are interested in reading some articles about commonism, you can read these articles:

Here are the google results from the Dutch google: