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Google Assistant sometimes uses AccuWeather when their weather service fails

When Google's first-party responses are not available, Google may ask if you want to use a third-party service.

Barry Schwartz on April 18, 2018 at 8:29 pm

Normally, when you ask Google Assistant or Google Home what the weather is, Google will tell you. But sometimes, Google might need some help from a friend, like AccuWeather. In instances when Google’s own weather service is not working, Google might suggest the user try a Google Assistant app from a third-party service.

This is exactly what Colm O Sullivan ran into the other day when he asked his Google Home for the current weather. Instead of Google responding with the weather, Google responded to Colm saying, “All right. For that, you might like AccuWeather. Want to give it a try?”

A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land that what triggered this was a “brief outage of our first party weather response.” So instead Google “offered the AccuWeather Action as a fall back option for users during that short window.”

Google explained that they may use AccuWeather or other services when their first-party responses are not available and that this was in no way an advertisement for AccuWeather.

Here is a video of this in action from Colm O Sullivan:

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.