Google gets it wrong.

They need spellcheck

[Marshall]

So I see this ad on facebook "Pittsburg Google Offers." As we know, the ads are location based. I am just outside of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Doesn't Google know that 'Pittsburgh' is spelled with an 'h' on the end?

For those who wonder why as there are other cities in the US called Pittsburg, there were two cites in the area century's ago, Pittsburg and Allegheny, the latter being located on the northern side of the Allegheny River. They merged and added the 'h' to Pittsburg.

More proof that the all mighty G is not infallible.

Marshall

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

We know all about here in Scotland with Edinburg or Edinboro. ;)

[lucy24]

Are they so used to saying "When you typed 'umiarjuap' you must have meant 'unsinkable'* so we'll quietly change it" that they automatically do the same thing for place names?


* Joke. They really change it to "marijuana". This, unfortunately, is not a joke. A deliberate experiment with the alternative spelling "umiarjuup" leads to results for "markup". I'm not going to test the phrase "over the top".

[Marshall]

I'm not going to test the phrase "over the top".

Why? ;)

Marshall

[lucy24]

The plot thickens... Continuing to test one of the above words, I found that you get different results if you click "Yes, I really did mean joomla*, not google" versus putting the search term in quotation marks (or using the "exact word or phrase" line in Advanced Search). I do not understand this.

A second weirdness. If you search for a genuine garbage string-- something that couldn't be a word in any language-- google will often give up and simply give you what you searched for.

Q.: Don't I have anything better to do than search for garbage in an attempt to trip g### up?
A.: It isn't really garbage. It just looks that way. I was legitimately searching for pages written in legacy fonts. Hence
wms2 `czA5 wq3C<hC x7m/3i5 bb5g6
or
wms2 çzA5 wq3C§C x7m/3i5 bb5g6
or possibly
wms2 |czA5 wq3C+hC x7m/3i5 bb5g6
(The ones with punctuation will not work, unfortunately. Those are the ones I was especially trying to find.)


* I have changed this example.