"Nice Ta Meet Ya, Folks!"

Behold the power of pop culture, or something.

I needed to verify the spelling of the term "fire marshal," one L or two?

So I plug "fire marshal" into the ol' Google and come up with 487 million results. The first page is nothing but references to Jim Carrey's Fire Marshal Bill, alternatively introduced as "fire marshal" and "fire marshall." Not until Page 2 of the results do I get a non-"In Living Color" reference (in this case, from the Nevada State Fire Marshal Division) to verify the spelling.

Two things learned:

1. Fire Marshal Bill is a more popular character than I realized.

2. Whoever is doing search engine optimization at the Nevada State Fire Marshal Division is doing an excellent job.

BUT, there's more.

The above was on my work computer.

Turning to my home computer, I get something different. 53 million results, to begin with.

And the first one is a link to the City of Idaho Falls' Fire Marshal's contact page.

The first page is full of state and local fire marshal contacts and a link to the "fire marshal" entry at Wikipedia.

I went through the first fifteen pages of links. Not one mention of Fire Marshal Bill.

Bing.com is powering the search on my work computer.

Google.com is powering the search on my home computer.

Make of that what you will.