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Google Redirects You to Marijuana Links

The "Did you mean" function is again weird

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

13th of March 2007, 08:35 GMT

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Let's have a quick test: go to Google and type Marijana in the search box. If you didn't know, Marijana is a common name in numerous Slav dialects. After you press the search button, Google returns you a lot of links but the most obvious is the "Did you mean" function displayed just after the search box. "Did you mean" marijuana," Google asks. No, I didn't mean marijuana, I just wanted to find more information about my mate, Marijana. This is not the first time when Google's Did you mean function is wrong

but I guess the feature must be personalized for regional search queries.

Phillip Lenssen from Google Blogoscoped posted a nice fictional dramatization: "Peter is 12 and searches for the name of 13 years old school crush Marijana in Google. Through this search, Peter is exposed to "marijuana," wonders "What's this?" and clicks on it. Two days later, forgetting about his school crush he follows up with the local drug dealer, demanding to be handed out "marijuana." A year later, Peter is moving on to harder drugs and drops out of school, living a life in misery, and..."

As I said, Google must update the function to include more personalization options to display different suggestions for every region that searches for a certain keyword. "I asked the spelling team about this and we do have localized spelling. I don't think we suggest this for RU or PL," Matt Cutts, Google engineer, sustained in a comment on the Google Blogoscoped article.

The Google employee is right because if you try to search on Google Poland for marijana the technology asks you: "Czy chodzi�o Ci o: mariana" (Did you mean: mariana). Although Mariana is a common Polish name, the first result displayed by the search engine redirects you to more information about marijuana.

TAGS:

google | marijuana | suggestion | search

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