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For “Define An English Person,” Google Suggests The C-Word

I’ve seen some weird Google results in my time, but this one is pretty strange. Search for “define an english person” or some related queries, and Google brings up the Wikipedia page about the C-word in response. As spotted by Search Engine Roundtable, people were asking in Google’s help forums why various searches related to […]

Danny Sullivan on December 22, 2011 at 4:45 pm

I’ve seen some weird Google results in my time, but this one is pretty strange. Search for “define an english person” or some related queries, and Google brings up the Wikipedia page about the C-word in response.

As spotted by Search Engine Roundtable, people were asking in Google’s help forums why various searches related to defining English people returned the Wikipedia page about the C-word, as shown below:

The screenshot shows Google listing the Wikipedia page first in a search for define english person. It also lists that page first or in the first page of results for related searches such as:

define an english person
what defines an english person
define english

For the record, Google tells us:

We’re aware of the results for this query, and we don’t like them. As always, we look for algorithmic improvements that will address thousands of searches, rather than manual fixes for just one.

A Google Bomb?

I’ve seen some reports wondering if the listing is being caused by a Google Bomb, but I don’t think that’s the case.

A Google Bomb is where there’s a concerted effort to link to a page with certain words contained within the links themselves, in an effort to make a page rank for those words, even if the page isn’t explicitly about that topic.

For example, when some people were upset with President George W. Bush a few years ago, there was a campaign to get people to link to his official biography with the words “miserable failure” in those links. As a result, the page start ranking for that.

Google later instituted a fix for Google Bombs like this. In particular, since the George W. Bush biography wasn’t explicitly about “miserable failure” nor used those words on the page, it was prevented from ranking for that term. Our stories below explain more about how Google Bombs work as well as the fix:

Much attention has been focused lately on how a search for “santorum” brings up an anti-Rick Santorum web site. Some have mistaken this as being due to a Google Bomb. It’s not, because while presidential hopeful Rick Santorum might not agree, the page at issue in that search is indeed explicitly about an alternative definition for “santorum” and does use that word.

No, Not A Google Bomb

So how about this Wikipedia page? If it were a Google Bomb, you’d expect to find some origin, to call-to-action somewhere on the web telling people to link to the page with certain words to produce this type of result within Google. After some hunting, I can’t find anything like this.

For example, here’s how the Open Site Explorer tool reports people linking to the page. The most popular text used in the links are for the C-word or involving that. None of the links show things like “english person” in them.

In addition, Google Bombs usually go off on Bing, as well. Do these same search on Bing, and the Wikipedia page doesn’t appear.

All this suggests a problem with Google’s own ranking systems, not due to some type of external internet graffiti attempt. Google told me they are looking into what happened and how to fix this. But with the upcoming holidays, don’t expect an answer or solution probably until the New Year.

Of course, by then, Google may face a new challenge. Thanks to its glitch, that Wikipedia page has now become relevant for searches on that topic. The odd Google search result were even added to the page, though currently, these have been edited off.

For “Define An English Person,” Google Suggests The C-Word

A Google Bomb?

No, Not A Google Bomb

(Stock image via Shutterstock Used with permission.)

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