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Where is Google fetching text not on Wikipedia or Google's cache?

         

farhanseo

5:50 am on May 15, 2019 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member



Upon searching the name <name of political figure, snipped>., Google shows a piece of text that is not on Wikipedia or Google's cache. <screenshot also snipped>. I want to know from where Google is picking this text (&#3510;&#3497;&#3540;&#3482;&#3535; &#3515;&#3514;&#1234;) from?

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 1:48 pm (utc) on May 15, 2019]
[edit reason] Edited because of potential political implications. [/edit]

Robert Charlton

1:51 pm on May 15, 2019 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Hi farhan, and my apologies for needing to edit out the name of the person searched, to avoid any personal or political blow-back for singling out that one person. (I'm extremely sorry at the return of political troubles that your country, Sri Lanka, is experiencing after many years of peace. It must be a dreadful experience.)

Your question...
...Google shows a piece of text that is not on Wikipedia or Google's cache.

Google's snippets, cache, and any webpage returned are all served from different sources, and very likely will not be in sync with a page itself, be it from Wikipedia or otherwise. In recent months, the cache in particular has been reported to be out of sync with many searches.

Additionally, Wikipedia, notably in articles involving political figures and political events, is constantily being revised and edited, often by opposing factions. Except for certain protected articles, Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any time, and the site's volunteer editors who keep tabs on these edits are generally overworked and behind. This makes content in political articles particularly volatile.

I'm not precisely certain of the order of operations involving the text you've posted, but it appears in your screen capture that Google was displaying some text that's since been removed in an edit on Wikipedia itself, and not yet removed from the snippets at the time of the screen shot.

You can also view the edit history in Wikipedia by clicking the "View history" tab up at the top of this page.

Both versions of what appear to be the passages in your screen capture are marked "== Controversy ==", suggesting that more edits may yet be likely.

Note that the characters you posted &#3510;&#3497;&#3540; &#3482;&#3535;&#3515;&#3514;&#1234, when dropped into Google Translate, show the input language detected is Sinhala, and the English translation is
Vehicle & # 1234

This may be sensitive information (I've exemplified it) and thus part of the "Controversy" noted.

Hoping this helps.

farhanseo

5:06 pm on May 15, 2019 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member



Hi Robert,

Yes, my country is going through some difficult times but hopefully things will be brought back to normal.

Thank you very much for the information regarding my question and absolutely agree on the edits made due to sensitive information.

I had no intention of any harm to anyone, but was interested to know where that piece of text were coming from and thanks for clarifying it.

Cheers,
Farhan