Monday, September 25, 2006

Google Q&A Bug

“Q&A” is a onebox result on top of normal Google results... e.g. when you’ll see “Albert Einstein - Date of Birth: 14 March 1879” with a link to a source. Wouldn’t it be nice to get into this “#0” position, skipping organic results? Well, an adult dating directory managed to get into this Q&A position, whether intentionally or not (rather not, it seems).

This bug’s fixed now, but I wonder what triggered it... and if it’s possible to hack your way into Q&A? Getting into Q&A doesn’t seem to be just about assembling thousands of relevant backlinks (the adult dating page in question has a PageRank of only 3); rather, the algorithm seems to analyze the semantics of your page content. Maybe one could build “semantic traps” like extensive definition list?

[Image via Phoenix/ SEW Forums.]

Google Q&A Bug by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (1)

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