Welcome Back to the Labyrinth

"We have been away far too long, my friends," Ashoka declared, his face lit by the eldritch green glow of his staff. "But we have finally returned to the labyrinth whence our adventures first began."

"Just imagine the treasures that lie within," said Yun Tai, flexing his mighty muscles. "Wealth enough to live in luxury the rest of our days."

"And arcane artifacts of great power," added Ashoka his words dripping with avarice. "All ours for the taking!"

"Umm...guys?" Nysa interrupted. "Do you hear something dripping?"

Saturday, December 18, 2010

New Google Reading Level Filter

Google has an interesting new search filter that breaks blogs and sites down by reading level.  Just for fun, I searched my own blog and apparently I have an overall rating of intermediate, with the following breakdown of posts:

Results by reading level for Tales from the Flaming Faggot:
By comparison, here are the results for Canada's national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, which is also of intermediate reading level, though with a larger overall proportion of intermediate level articles:

Results by reading level for Toronto Globe and Mail:

Basic21%
Intermediate71%
Advanced7%
And it's American equivalent, the New York Times, which has an even spread of Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced level articles:

Results by reading level for New York Times:

Basic31%
Intermediate38%
Advanced30%
And, just for fun, the World Weekly News, which is rated as Basic reading level although, apparently, they have a larger percentage of Intermediate articles and a smaller percentage of Basic articles than my own blog:

Results by reading level for World Weekly News:
This filter is kind of neat, although I'm skeptical about it's accuracy.  I've noticed that the overall reading level doesn't always jive with the breakdown of articles by reading level.  I'm also not sure that the filter is of any practical value, but it is kind of fun to play with.

If you'd like to check out how your own blog is rated click the 'Advanced Search' function below the Google Search bar and select 'annotated reading level' from the drop down list.

2 comments:

Shane Mangus said...

Here are my results:

http://swordandsanity.blogspot.com/2010/12/fun-with-google-reading-level-filter.html

Nothing advanced... but then again I do not have a Ph.D. like someone I know! ;-)

Sean Robson said...

This is why I'm skeptical about the results. Your blog is rated as Basic reading level overall, despite the fact that you have a higher percentage of both intermediate and advanced level posts than I do.

I guess I'd have to read more to find out how they are conducting their assessments, but I guess I'm not that curious :)