[Dante Hicks]

I think in this case it's probably because ASG would have read that story and associated it mentally with evictions. But the story doesn't mention evictions at all (they're not the same thing per se) and thus wouldn't come up from searching for evictions. (Maybe, I've not checked)

I only found it quickly because I'm on a CLG mailing list and remembered seeing an email recently about repossession statistics. I assumed the story would have been essentially the same.

Most of the times I can't find something online it's down to a similar phenomenon. The mind is seems quite efficient at remembering the things it needs to - but this is usually achieved through a series of links. So if you misremember/misinterpret something on first read then you'll essentially misfile it. It's there, but linked to something else.

There's been times where I've been searching for ages for something - sure for example that I read some statistic about France. I'll try all the logical connotaitons, and then give up, defeated. Much later I'll happen upon the article and find the statistic was about Spain, but the author had a surname of 'Paris' or something stupid.

Obviously that's a retarded example (and an example of retardation) but you get the general drift. Search engines can't always make the leap from what we've typed in to what we really mean.