Google Might Be A Misogynist Search Engine

Simple test: go to the official page of Google (in English) and search for the "she invented" phrase. Quite uncanny, I know, but go on, try it. Approximately 2.470.000 results returned by Google; but have a look at the "Did you mean" suggestion. The Mountain View-company encourages users to search for "HE invented", a phrase that might return you more relevant results. However, the suggestion reveals an interesting fact about Google because some users might see it as an important problem of the search engine. The problem was first discovered by a Digg user who tried to find out how many inventions are produced by women; however, the search engine says it's better to search for a man.

Still, I tried to search the Internet for the same phrase, but with a search engine other than Google. The first one was Yahoo, the giant portal being quite reticent and refusing to offer a suggestion for an alternative search query. Ask.com was similar to Yahoo, while Live Search didn't provide any type of related search.

This is not the first time when Google's Did you mean function provides weird suggestions. In the past, there were several cases reported that revealed Google search problems. However, the most important problems were involving the Googlebombs that appeared on the search technology, a spam method that caused different search results to certain queries. Google is continuously struggling to block all the malicious attempts and block spam, but it was proved several times that their filters are very vulnerable. Basically, a Googlebomb can be easily created, because the search engine's algorithm is based on the number of backlinks for a certain page. The attacker can change the results by adding inappropriate information and placing numerous links on alternative pages.