Why Some Might Think Google Is Hostile To The Daily Show

Does Google dislike The Daily Show? Why is it showing a negative description of the popular late night show?

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If you ask Google about The Daily Show, the response might look a bit hostile towards the show. As @adamjohnsonNYC pointed out, the Knowledge Graph box that shows up for the popular comedy show uses a negative description of the show. It reads:

Accused by some of misinforming its core audience of young adults about international news, this series doesn’t hide the fact that it’s not a news program and only uses newsworthy stories as a jumping-off point…

Here is a picture:

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One might assume this is a description Google itself wrote about the show, but no – it is not. Google is picking it up from their crawl of the web and because Google is not showing the source of the description, searchers may assume it came from Google directly.

It does seem like other places are using the description as well, including Verizon, AOL TV, TIVO and others. So it is probably being licensed from a third-party provider.

We have reached out to Google for a comment on this and will update this story if and when we hear back.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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