What is MysterySeeker.com?

What is MysterySeeker.com?

The internet is a global phenomenon that has changed the way we communicate, work and play; even the Oxford English Dictionary has had to amend its contents to include the universal colloquialisms of techno babble and terms in our vocabulary.  It isn’t surprising therefore that if you’ve ever heard of ‘it’, someone will have written a blog on ‘it’.  Almost every conceivable topic or interest has been entered into a search engine at some point in time so that everything from the mundane to the utterly bizarre has a place in the vast, gobbling world network.

On the 10^th February 2009 (http://whois.domaintools.com/mysterygoogle.com) the domain name www.mysterygoogle.com was registered by a private, anonymous owner apparently listed as Markmoniter.  The registrant address is recorded as the company quarters of Google.  Back then if you were to visit that site, a strange and back-to-front search engine greeted you.  However, when you typed in your keywords and clicked to engage you would be redirected to a results list for a completely different term. 

After complaints from the corporate giant Google, mysterygoogle.com changed their name to mysteryseeker.com on the 30^th November 2009, according to the mighty brain of Wikipedia.  Google has not acknowledged any authority over the site but its popularity spread like wild fire reaching internet traffic of 440,000 visitors in November of 2009. 

Today the site is still running and works on the premise of directing searchers to the search term of the previous user, effectively generating random pages to visit.  Sometimes it seems to use the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google and direct you straight to a website, bypassing search results.  “You Can’t Always get what you Want” – there’s a lesson to learn and a philosophical debate to be had behind mysterseeker.com! 

These are actual examples:

Keywords Typed: weather forecast

Directed to Webpage: Wikipedia’s page on Centipedes

Keywords Typed: Movie Reviews

Search Results For: Lenovo?

Keywords Typed: Who am I?

Directed to Webpage: Everything is annoying.com

Keywords Typed: Oranges

Search Results For: Procrastination is all I’m good at (Ironic considering the nature of the website!)

Soon another, connected trend took hold with the craze of a ‘mystery mission’.  If the user types ‘What is my mission?’ a demonstratively Google search page comes up with an often bizarre and egregious mission statement.  From research for this article it appears that these challenges are supplied by other mystery seeker users who enter weird and sometimes embarrassing instructions into the search book with the label ‘Mission’.  The site isn’t always reliable nor does it always do what it’s supposed to but that’s kind of the premise on which it was build.  It would appear that receiving a mission is not guaranteed and that this is not what the site was built for but merely the fun and intrigue of receiving someone else’s search query but so many people are entering missions into the form that you will get one eventually.  If you think about it, it’s even a good way of advertising!  Many of the missions seem to relate to MLIA which is a website devoted to the everyman – My Life Is Average. 

These are authentic examples of missions:

“Build a house out of fruit”

“Your mission is to copy and paste this into Mystery Google until you have a story worthy of MLIA. Good luck”

“Go watch a Very Potter Musical”

“Find the nearest family member and start singing a random Disney song”

“Chop down the tallest tree in the forest wiiiiiiiith....a herring!!”

The trouble and dangers of these missions was that many people started creating tasks that were against privacy laws, such as:  “Call Lisa on 555-1436 and tell her that  her boyfriend is cheating on her” or “Email someone@something with the first picture that comes up when you type ‘sex’ into Google images”.  You can see how this could be alarming and frankly terrifying and harassing depending on the roll of the cosmic dice, or search engine.  Please do not phone, text, email, IM, tweet anyone with potentially damaging and hurtful information.

If this site is taken with a pinch of salt and enjoyed for its quirky attributes then it is both fun and informative – who knows what you’ll end up learning about.  If you’re stuck in the office because it’s pouring from the heavens outside and you really don’t feel like getting drenched when you go out to lunch then stop playing ‘hearts’ or ‘solitaire’ and go to mysteryseeker.com.  If you find yourself at a loose end and needing to kill time you can also visit mysteryseeker.com and you can even view videos on YouTube of the results of people accepting random missions.  But remember, and this is important, what you do you will NOT get what you searched for!