They knew it was coming surely.

Unacceptable

2. As a careful reader might pick up from what I had written, just googling for hits is not a good measure. But …

3. If one wishes to do that, then one needs to use more refined and targeted search terms and search instructions to cut out the possibility that the hits include, for instance, a Luke Hipkins (but not a Chris Hipkins) or Gary Finlayson (but not a Chris Finlayson) or include people with similar names in other countries.

The search terms that I used (and they are other ways to refine the search which I will let others find out … this googling thing can get quite sophisticated and can put one ‘researcher’ ahead of another by miles if more refined terms/instructions are used) was:

“chris hipkins” site:nz

and

“chris finlayson” site:nz

These tell Google to limit the search only on New Zealand sites, and the inverted commas tells Google to retrieve results with only those two words.

My results, just being done again, are identical as previously and the results are respectively:

Chris Hipkins: 28,300
http://www.google.co.nz/#hl=en&source=hp&q=%22chris+hipkins%22+site%3Anz&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=%22chris+hipkins%22+site%3Anz&fp=6aed753a793df92e

Chris Finlayson: 19,300
http://www.google.co.nz/#hl=en&q=%22chris+finlayson%22+site%3Anz&meta=&aq=f&oq=%22chris+finlayson%22+site%3Anz&fp=6aed753a793df92e

4. To reinforce the points 2 and 3 that I’ve made above, Luke’s search reveals for example, a hit that picked up Chris Bedford and Cathryn Finlayson (the latter name is not even on the actual webpage, for whatever reason, when you click on the link):

http://m.nzherald.co.nz/story/sport/10625033/
However, BMW Oracle meteorologist Chris Bedford was only “hopeful” the race … New caps Natasha Fitzsimons and Cathryn Finlayson have been named in the New

and for eg, Alfred E Hipkins and the words from the side banner with Blogs Chris Carter:

http://gotcha.co.nz/tag/health/
Alfred E. Hipkins blogs about his recent health experience. … Unfortunately for Alfred E. Hipkins, even though Elidel is expensive and effective against

The search terms and instructions I’ve used, although cannot guarantee that similar hits would necessarily be excluded, would go some way towards minimising such kinds being included.

5. Bea’s search includes the letters: mp. That would yield a different result. As there is no indication Bea used inverted commas to tell Google to limit itself to retrieving hits to those names, the number of hits would be different as well.

6. It may be better in the future, when quoting one’s own search, to indicate what was typed into Google (or whichever other search engine) for replication and comparability.

I trust this helps.

[OK everyone, this is now way off topic. I know that my comment about Chris Finlayson was a bit provocative, so I've allowed this to go on for a bit, but now it's time to get back to the main point of the post, which is why the Nat front bench haven't been speaking in the debate on Key's speech.]

They must have all rushed home to mow the lawns

The google.co.nz results are as follows

10,800 for Chris Hipkins
26,000 for Chris Finlayson

Here are the links for you.

Hipkins- http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=8U4&q=chris+hipkins&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryNZ&aq=f&oq=

Finlayson- http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=BV4&q=Chris+Finlayson&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryNZ&aq=f&oq=

I’ve just undertaken a search telling Google to search for “Chris Hipkins” and “Chris Finlayson” on New Zealand sites and came up with quite different results:

Chris Hipkins: 28,300
Chris Finlayson: 19,300