lucy24 - 11:09 am on Sep 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

Oh, hey, I just remembered something. I posted about it last year some time.

:: shuffling papers ::

The relevant bit is buried among a lot of other blather, so I'll just quote.

I once described someone as the world's leading authority on such-and-such obscure subject. I didn't and still don't know if he really is, but I haven't seen any serious competition. Months later it occurred to me that it should be possible to look it up. ::search, search:: Oh, now this sounds promising: an article by the person I named. I've read the article; it's damn good. Maybe I glossed over an introduction by some equally knowledgeable person, describing him as the world's leading et cetera. No luck. Maybe in some older, cached version. This comes with the g### boilerplate, informing me that my search terms only appear in pages that link to this page. Let's stop right there.

Bingo. If the page I'm talking about had happened to be roboted-out, it would still have come up in my search, thanks to that "pages that link to this page". And some searchers would presumably have been curious enough to click.