Google gets it VERY wrong
filed in Google, SEO on Apr.20, 2009
On Friday I spoke about the trust that can easily be generated just by having a top ranking in Google for a relevant search term. The findings of a recent survey showed that by having a top ranking, people assumed that you were an expert in your field. What this means is that people are effectively outsourcing the decision making of who to trust to a third party (Google) which, frankly, is pure madness!
Why, I hear you cry, is madness? Google is respected for being a leader in technology and innovation, known for employing the largest number of PhDs in the world and generally held up to be one of the most clever companies in the world. Why wouldn’t you trust their judgement?
The answer is because they sometimes get things very, very wrong.
For example, I was speaking with my good friend Jim Connolly last week about some search results relating to his website and the appearance of the site links in google.com and google.co.uk. You may know that Google has recently tested some new sitelinks and currently searching for Jim’s name on .com and .co.uk shows different sitelink layouts (see below).
google.com sitelinks
google.co.uk sitelinks
One of the sitelinks was called ‘Pedro’ which took us to this blog post about building your Twitter network. Jim immediately asked: “Who on earth is Pedro?”. After a quick search we found that Pedro was one of the commenters on that particular blog post. For some completely obscure reason, Google decided to take the name of one of the commenters and instead of using something normal like the title tag, or the h1 tag or word which occurs the most, it decided to take a totally random comment (which looked like a pretty spammy comment to me) and use that as the sitelink for the post.
Pedro's comment
WHY? Google claims that it wants to index the web and provide the best results but I’m pretty sure that even I could do a better job than that! I can’t think of any software program that would decide that the name of a single commenter in a post with over 100 comments in it would be a great title for a sitelink that’s going to appear in the #1 position for a search!
Yet people are blindly trusting technology that throws up such stupid results!  I guess that if they choose to place their trust in Google then that’s up to them and it’s their fault if they get burned but I do feel that a little bit of education is required. Please note: Google doesn’t always get it right!
This isn’t the only example. Patrick Altoft recently blogged about Google’s appalling local results.
Both of these examples are related to Google’s core service of search. Google does some very clever things, but I would suggest that you use your own brain to work out who to trust rather than letting Google do the work for you!
April 20th, 2009 on 1:02 pm
Well, so what?
Don’t you have something other to be angry about?
April 20th, 2009 on 1:34 pm
I think I’m more “mildly startled” rather than “angry”!
The aim of the post isn’t to let off steam but to ensure people bring an element of comment sense when they interpret search results.
April 20th, 2009 on 8:14 pm
Dear Gregor,
Think you are right, But doesn’t the same happen with everything else?. I think that in general you can trust companies like Google, if you keep in the back of your mind that systems fail because of human failure. Please forgive me if I show up on your site link layout.
Regards
April 22nd, 2009 on 6:26 pm
Hello Gregor,
While I agree in principle with your post, until something better comes along (or Google actually does something about these results) it seems to me we don’t have a huge amount of choice. None of the other search engines are anywhere close to the reach and relevancy of Google, so that puts them in the category of Best Game In Town.
I guess as long as everyone keeps in mind that Google is not, nor probably ever will be, “perfect”, then these glitches can be looked at with more humor than malice.
That said, I completely agree with you that people should be using their heads for something besides a “hat-rack” and making better decisions on their own.
Deep Peace,
Ross – Tolemac
April 27th, 2009 on 10:26 pm
Search engines aren’t flawless. Aside from the occasional bad result, Google is still a pretty good search engine. I see no need to exaggerate its (lack of) reliability to get your (however valid) point across.
I agree people have too much faith in Google and it could lead to incorrect information being circulated.
April 29th, 2009 on 5:19 pm
It seems everyone trusts Google which is worrying really since they have far to much control of the web already. The internet was designed to be an information highway but google are constantly putting toll booths on it.