Google Blogoscoped

Forum

More Google Q&A  (View post)

gary price [PersonRank 10]

Tuesday, September 5, 2006
17 years ago5,010 views

Over at Ask, we've been doing this for many months. I first blogged about it in July.
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/45512.html#id45512

A few examples.

Both:
Languages of Finland
http://www.ask.com/web?q=Languages+of+Finland&qsrc=1&o=333&l=dir

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Languages+of+Finland&btnG=Search

In addition, the Ask result also has direct links to other sources including Wikipedia, the BBC Profile for the country, and travel info. Finally, clicking Finland takes you to another result with more basic country info.

Ask Only
Birth rate Iceland
http://www.ask.com/web?q=birth+rate+iceland&qsrc=1&o=333&l=dir
Birth Rate Iceland
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=birth+rate+iceland&btnG=Google+Search

Both
Ask
Prime Minister Australia
http://www.ask.com/web?q=prime+minister+australia&qsrc=1&o=333&l=dir
Google
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=prime+minister+australia&btnG=Search

GDP Ireland (2004 number)
http://www.ask.com/web?q=gdp+ireland&qsrc=1&o=333&l=dir

Google uses a 2001 number
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=gdp+ireland&btnG=Search

Ask also does this for governors, U.S. States
Again, Ask includes direct links to the govs web site and an image of the
state flag.

United States info. example
governor New Hampshire
http://www.ask.com/web?q=governor+of+new+hampshire&qsrc=1&o=333&l=dir
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=governor+of+new+hampshire&btnG=Search

governor Massachusetts
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=governor+massachusetts&spell=1
http://www.ask.com/web?q=governor+massachusetts&qsrc=1&o=333&l=dir

Tibor Santa [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Actually this feature work only at the google.com domain, but not at my national subdomain for example (www.google.co.hu).

compare:
http://www.google.co.hu/search?q=terrain+of+belgium
and
http://www.google.com/search?q=terrain+of+belgium

the Hungarian result page won't have the onebox :(

it didn't work on other national subdomain, either.. like:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=terrain+of+belgium

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

On .co.uk, it works.

Roberto [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=prime+minister+italy&btnG=Search

Italy — Prime Minister: Silvio Berlusconi
According to http://en.powerwissen.com/tJFx3dgPiRopwYxspIIvow%3D%3D_Italy.html

what!?

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

They've used an outdated version of the page. Facts should be checked from more than one source and not just once.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I bet they do Ionut... they just show one sample link but you can also click on "more sources". I'm sure there's a threshold over 1... of course, I may give Google too much credit :)

Gary Price [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Roberto:
Is this better?

http://www.ask.com/web?q=prime+minister+italy&qsrc=0&o=312&l=dir

As you can see we use several sources:
World Factbook
Wikipedia
BBC Profiles
and applicable in this case, travel info.

Btw, a good but not perfect source for world leader info (updated every two weeks or so) can be found here:
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/chiefs/index.html

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

"The Chief of State of
Italy is President Giorgio Napolitano, and the Head of State is President Of The Council Of Ministers Romano Prodi"

The answers should be: "Romano Prodi". There are two names in the phrase and I didn't ask who's the president.

Anyway, MSN and Yahoo are also not well-informed.

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=prime+minister+italy&sourceid=Mozilla-search
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=prime+minister+italy&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz2

Gary Price [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Well, we feel good. :-)

Amit Patel [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Oh, ya – the sneaky Q&A feature again....

-----------------------------------
Take a look at this:

Search Google for: % of African American in Los Angeles
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%25+of+African+American+in+Los+Angeles

At the top of the page is a Google Q&A answer – 11% – based on data retrieved from IDcide.com
http://www.idcide.com/citydata/ca/los-angeles.htm.

But the site itself has been removed from the main index.

No pages in site command.
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:idcide.com

No pages in allinurl command
http://www.google.com/search?q=allinurl:www.idcide.com

No pages in info command
http://www.google.com/search?q=info:www.idcide.com

Crawling been done pretty recently.
There is an August 2006 cache.
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:www.idcide.com/citydata/ca/los-angeles.htm

--------------------------

Thus a site that has been deemed good enough to serve as an Answer reference for the Google Q&A feature – yet has been banned from the main index.

Evil?
Ya betcha!

Forum home

Advertisement

 
Blog  |  Forum     more >> Archive | Feed | Google's blogs | About
Advertisement

 

This site unofficially covers Google™ and more with some rights reserved. Join our forum!