Google Gives Wikipedia a Handjob on Groundhog’s Day
February 16th, 2006 by Michael Gray in Google, SEOIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
I’m not sure why someone would need to do this but the serp for Ground Hog’s Day looks an awful lot like a handjob to me.
(screen shot after the jump)
Added: after reading Matt’s comments and doing more investigating it appears this a new UI SERP and not a hand edit at all
Sphere It
February 17th, 2006 at 9:55 am
This one : http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=seo&btnG=Google+Search looks even funnier to me - does SEOCHat have some special deal with Google to display a ton of links to their internal pages (SEO Forums - Future PageRank, Google Dance - Google Optimization) - nobody else in the SERPs gets that special treatment.
As for the Groundhog day, I believe it’s might even be some special new feature - notice the words “According to…) before the Wikipedia link? Might be something similar to definitions… I am guessing this is because of the way how the search query is formulated - in the form of a natural question… Don’t know if it’s any different for you, but for me a simple search for “Groundhog day” brings totally different results from this query in your screenshot, and no link to Wikipedia…
February 17th, 2006 at 10:50 am
[...] This post by Graywolf made me notice something interesting going on in Google. If it is a new feature it’s a very subtle way to implement it - nobody knows what’s going on if you just stumble into it one day doing your searches. [...]
February 17th, 2006 at 11:55 am
Do you think we did a hand job for [what is economics] or [what is barbeque] or [what is arbitrage]? Why leap to that conclusion about Groundhog’s Day?
(To answer the question, I believe this was algorithmic and no money was involved. So no hand job.)
IrishWonder, I left a post over at your blog about [seo] but it doesn’t look like you’ve approved it. But the short answer is to read
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ui-fun-better-queries/
to see how that feature is also algorithmic with no money involved, aka no hand job there either.
February 17th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
Matt, sorry about that, comments on my blog don’t work, only trackback ping does and I can’t get around to fixing that…. Can you email me your comment so I can post it as an update to my post?
February 17th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Ok it’s not a specific hand job but it’s not just as simple as typing [what is x]. For example [what is a full house] triggers the programming but [what is a good credit score] doesn’t. What’s with all the favoritism being shown for wikipedia, that place is wildly inaccurate, heck they thought even you were too spammy to link to (go figure).
February 17th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
Pretty sure this is just an extension to Google definitions or whatever a la Ask Jeeves.
February 18th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
Anyone know who/how they update definitions? I have a glossary on a blog that seems to just be ignored. Are definition lists hand picked by nuns?
February 19th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
[...] To avoid the power of Threadjacking™ graywolf posts an article on Threadwatch about Google definitions then follows up his idea that Google is giving Wikipedia hand jobs in the SERPS here. [...]
February 19th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Looks like the old Google Q&A feature to me.
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-04-07-n20.html