I could never understand what Google's "I am feeling lucky" button is for. I mean I never used it. It is said to bring you right to the first found page, so what? I prefer to see the whole list, to check if there are more appropriate links...
Last night it occurred to me that this feature could have rather revolutionary effect, if used not from Google's own page, but embedded in links. Let's say, you want to give a definition, as Jason did today for "genocide". Instead of performing a search and linking to the one of the results, you make a link those points to:
h
ttp://www.google.com/search?q=genocide%20definition&btnI=I%27m+feeling+lucky Like this:
genocide And if we believe that Google does a good job, i.e. always list the most relevant and authoritative resource first, we will see (in theory) the best definition mankind has so far. The point here is if there will be a better definition in the future, the link will automatically point to them, without our intervention.
Advantages may not be too clear in this example, as when we are talking about new terms, that are currently under discussion. I started to think about it, when I saw "top 10 Google results for Social Software" sidebar on somebody's site. I first was confused, what's the point, and then realized that this way you always have links to
currently most popular sites, and you do not have to maintain the list - Google does it for you.