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Austria? That’s Not A Country, Says Google: Australia’s A Country

Danny Sullivan on December 6, 2011 at 4:11 pm

First Google questioned Mitt Romney’s chances of winning the US presidential election. Now it’s suggesting that Austria is less important than Australia.

You Say Austria, Google Says Australia

In a search for Austria’s biggest companies, Google automatically changes the query and searches instead for Australia’s biggest companies:

austria_s biggest companies - Google Search

Forbes spotted the glitch, which is the second major problem like this to hit Google recently.

Romney Can’t Win

Last month, Google gained attention because of how a search for “romney can win” caused Google to suggest, “Did you mean: Romney can’t win,” as shown below

Our previous story, Even Google Thinks “Romney Can’t Win”, covers this more and how it was caused by Google’s spell checker getting confused.

Good Intentions Gone Bad

The Romney problem has since been fixed. The Austria-Australia problem is likely due to Google seeing lots of searches for “austria’s biggest businesses” that get changed by searchers themselves to “australia’s biggest businesses.”

It is easy to accidentally type the wrong name, and if that is happening a lot, then Google might have automatically thought “Austria” was a mistake it was trying to helpfully correct to “Australia.”

Chances are, Google will override this in the near future or tweak its algorithm.

Now go watch this classic clip from Crocodile Dundee, which puts the headline in this story into perspective, for those who don’t get it:

That’s A Knife

Crocodile Dundee

— MOVIECLIPS.com

About The Author

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.