We got used to bugs in all the software products. We have all experienced a programs that would suddenly freeze, or even a whole computers brought to the halt. Google is nothing more than a program on a computer. And as any program on any computer, it can be wrong, and be very wrong actually.
What is Google actually?
Google is an indexing software. It looks (reads actually) at a web pages and stores their content in its database. With its content stored it analyses the content taken from those web sites, and assigns each page and web site a relevant keywords. Google determines the keywords by their occurrence(s) on the web page. So when a user does a search Google will be able to quickly display the relevant pages for that keyword. It will not have to scan all the pages, it just looks into its index.
Google is also trying to tell us as much as it can about those search results really. Google wants to be informative. Therefore next to the search results, Google also places a link with a text ‘Similar pages’. The idea is that if a user does not like this result, but is interested in the topic, could drill down into the related pages here.
Google also show the ‘Age’ of an entry in its search results pages. So when it can Google will show when was some result entered in its database. Google currently shows the age only for the content that is submitted by the Google XML Sitemap or that is ‘PINGed’. And here is where Google gets it all wrong….
Here is just one example:
I have made a blog about the Jobs in IT in Ireland. The Idea was to list all the Irish IT Jobs on one place. I have put it under the domain www.Jobs-IT.ie. When I was about done I submitted it to Google. And the spider come, indexed the content and started showing it. The new content is submitted every few hours, as a new jobs are posted. And here is where Google got the times all wrong.
The time next to the search result that Google shows is – the date 8th April.
The content that the page in the Google index shows is from the 3rd of April.
I do know that the content is actually being published there on an hourly basis, so the page in the Google index if it would have really been from the 8th would have the content from the 8th or in worst case some of it from teh 7th if the snapshot was taken in the early morning. But Google is showing the content from the 3rd and dating the same content as it is of the 8th. This is where Google got it’s dating all wrong.
Do you still trust Google?
As any other piece of software, it has bugs. Bugs do get fixed in most cases when they get fined. The point is that Google as any piece of software has a long list of problems and con not be totally trusted.