Google Thinks Michael Jackson Died At Age 65 In 2007

Jun 27, 2009 at 2:39pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Oops. Bad, Google. Occasionally the service inserts direct answers to searches at the top of its results. It makes guesses at this, and in the case of michael jackson died, it’s making the wrong guess. Henry Elliss tipped us that Google’s showing that Michael Jackson died in 2007, at age 65.

The problem? Google’s drawing on Wikipedia and picking the wrong Michael Jackson, the writer rather than the King Of Pop. That’s wrong in terms of what people currently spiking searches for “michael jackson died” are expecting. Those interested in the writer did spike queries back when the writer died. The more recent spike is due to the pop singer’s dead (you can see both spikes on Google Trends).

It’s pretty amazing to see this happen. I’m pretty sure I’ve done that exact search in the past day or two since Jackson’s death and not seen it. Why is suddenly would pop up — and why Google isn’t keeping a better eye on a query it knows is drawing traffic — is strange.

Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series, maintains a personal blog called Daggle and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan.

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Daniel Tunkelang, June 27th, 2009 at 9:02 pm ET:

Certainly an embarrassing mistake, but I’d cut Google a bit of slack on this one. I’m sure they’ve updated their heuristic to look for the “person who has recently died” tag on Wikipedia entries–and, in any case, they did source the entry referring to the writer.

I think the regurgitated UAL bankruptcy story last year was a much bigger scandal.

http://thenoisychannel.com/2008/09/15/information-accountability/

Google Thinks Michael Jackson Died At Age 65 In 2007

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