Very recently, I came across a simple flowchart which displayed the Top 10 Signs That Your Google Search Results Suck.
The second decision point of the flowchart is, “Is the top result Wikipedia?” If yes, “If Google always serves Wikipedia pages, what exactly do I need Google for?”
Moments ago, in a simple Google search for “where” to figure out whether it should be capitalized in song titles or not (I’m anal about such things in my media collection), I was shown this gem (click for larger):
If for some reason you can’t view the image, it is a screen capture from Google results which shows the #2 entry as being a link to Wikipedia’s “where” article. The problem? That article does not exist. Essentially, the Wikipedia page might as well be screaming “404 Not Found” at you, but Google’s benevolence toward the mighty encyclopedia bumps this utterly useless result to the number 2 spot.
As far as search results go, that’s about as sucky as it’s ever gotten in my experience.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey, Rick, do you hear that?
It’s the world’s smallest violin.
You know what it’s playing?
Cry me a river.
:D
It wasn’t so much a complaint as it was an observation; Google’s love-affair with Wikipedia is becoming more and more of an annoyance with a great many people. I’m glad to see that Answers.com is no longer *always* the top result for me, but now Wikipedia is hogging all the love from the sites I’d rather visit — i.e., the official sites of whatever it is I’m looking for.
Wow, you are a whinner (I looked up how to spell that on Google and got no Wikipedia link) on our blog too and someone other then me commented on it first :) Who really Googles “where” anyway?
If you Google “whiner” (it only has one “n” ;)), Wikipedia is the second result for its article for “The Whiners,” who were apparently a character group on Saturday Night Live.
I Googled “where” because I wasn’t sure if it was a preposition or not; I should have known better, but I never had a teacher that taught me to memorize the list of prepositions — several of my classmates in high school did, and my wife still can. I can’t, and so Google fills in the gap for me when she’s not around to ask.
Incidentally, if you Google “Sandi,” Wikipedia takes the fifth spot; for “Rick” it takes going to the second page to result #20 before it shows up, which is fine with me.
Leave a Comment