You know the story. There’s something that gets searched for on the Internet a lot. Call it Foo. Enterprising (if inconsiderate) people realize this, and make gateway pages designed specifically to catch people who search for Foo and shower them with ads and links to lots and lots of things that may or may not have anything to do with Foo. You, the Foo-searcher, know that _somewhere_ out there is a definitive Foo site, but it’s that much harder to find because you have to wade through all these stupid adFoo pages in your Google results before you find the right one. The more popular the Foo, the worse the problem is.

Anyway, you’ll come across the biggest adFoo blight on the Internet any time you try to do a search for music lyrics. Do like I did and google {“American Idiot” lyrics}. Is there an official site, a well-organized fan site, or a Greenday-specific site of any kind to be found in the first page of results? Nope. Take a peek at a few of the pages that _are_ there and you’ll quickly see what I mean. It’s not just the ads — just as bad is the fact that all those adFoo sites have absolutely atrocious design. They could care less how they look or how usable they are — they just want to get a couple clickthroughs out of you.

(I did finally find a good fansite with the lyrics. It’s only a “political” album if all you look at are the first couple songs. All in all the lyrics are pretty disappointing though. Some characters and conceits tie things together and make for a concept album, I suppose, but there’s not much to be said for the wordplay otherwise. The music rocks, though.)