Sunday, November 09, 2008

Something fishy

If you had googled "Snatch Land Rover" (with the inverted commas) yesterday, it would have brought you straight to this, as the number one search item. Then, however, the entry was a "stub" comprising three paragraphs only, of the most sketchy details.

Having spent most of the day yesterday working on the entry, building it to the equivalent of eight pages of text, the page traffic increased substantially. However, when you now google the search string, you get this - a rather inaccurate BBC Q&A on the "snatch" - which yesterday was way down the order. The wiki "snatch" entry is nowhere to be seen.

The plot then thickens. If you tighten the search and type in the string "snatch land rover" - again with the inverted commas - and add the word wikipedia, you will get this - the general entry for Land Rover Defender. Using google, therefore, it is impossible to find the page.

Try the same original search ("snatch land rover") on the yahoo search engine and it brings you straight to the "snatch" entry. Only on google is the entry impossible to find. This cannot possibly be accidental. What is google playing at? And why?

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