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	title of this thread your message One point that seems to have been missed in the above (and which I tried to subtly point up) is that while searching Google may or may not validate a claim, citing numbers of sites returned in simple searches of multiple words (like the three mentioned above) betray a misunderstanding of the nature of search engines, and will prove nothing. You see it all the time in newspapers, at least in the UK, when lazy and stupid journalists use a Google search as a way of showing relative popularity. The most egregious examples are those that try to use Google to show that, say, Star Wars is more popular than Christianity: a search on "christianity" returns x number of hits, say the journos, while one on "star wars" returns vastly more. What these journos (and, I'm sorry to say, Robert, above) have misunderstood is that the "star wars" search (without quote marks) will return any site that mentions the words anywhere on the site, and not necessarily together. And that's before you even start worrying about semantics: i.e. how many of the sites in such a search would be about Reagan's defence policies, and how many about George Lucas's movie? And how many about neither of these, but which simply and coincidentally mention the two words separately within the text of the site? A simple search won't discern. Similarly, "josef hoffmann bauhaus" will return every (indexed) site that mentions these words, but these may be 39,000 sites that say "Josef Hoffmann had nothing to do with the Bauhaus". They may be sites that mention the Bauhaus, and then in a separate paragraph or article, mention Hoffmann. Hell, there could be sites showing up in those results written by a guy called Hoffmann, where he mentions how much he loves listening to Bauhaus, and how much he admires Josef Stalin. Essentially, though, simple searches like this (or, as I hope I've shown, "william shatner bauhaus" or even "le corbusier bauhaus") are essentially meaningless if you're looking at sheer numbers. They certainly don't prove or disprove a causal link between terms. So, they're not germane to any argument. associated web images (optional) associated web link (optional) your email your password create a forums account \| you forgot your password?