Friday, February 18, 2011

"world cup" - google fail

almighty goog's search algorithm sucks.
do a search for 'world cup' from google.lk (to which all searchers from sri lanka are automatically directed) and confirm.

even though 2011 icc cricket world cup is upon us and sri lankans do not care much for soccer, of the first 10 web results, 8 are for fifa world cup, 1 (at no 10) is for rugby. only the 6th is for icc world cup (tournament schedule from official site hosted by yahoo).

as you can see from the screenshot (click to enlarge ) news results are better.
image results shitty.


google.co.in is only marginally better. instead of 6th, official cricket world cup site is at no 1 (one cannot but suspect that results produced by algorithm were overridden to insert this at no 1; google has done this in past notably to counteract google bombs) and wikipedia's entry for 2011 icc world cup also puts in an appearance lower down, but rest is for fifa.

other search engines (yahoo, bing, etc.) are no better.

if this is the case for "world cup" imagine the quality of results for other searches by south asians.

if google does not wise up, there is a business opportunity here for some one else. remember that google was a latecomer to search, others like infoseek (now unrecognizable as go.com), altavista etc., which once dominated, failed bc they couldn't produce the results ppl were searching for. google is already falling behind in east asia.


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

SN's never ending complaints.