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Don't believe everything you read - not even on Google
Whether we like it or not we, as Webmasters and online marketers, rely on Google in one way or another every day. We search for information, we bid on keywords and we stake our reputation and our future on getting our sites - or those of our clients - to the top spots on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). We live and breath Google and it's not hard to get to the point where we accept everything that Google tells us.

If it appears on Google then it must be right.

And if that is the way we experienced people handle the information that Google gives us then what about the people out there who use Google but don't have the same experience that we do? How much more do they trust what Google tells them?

Of course sometimes we experienced Webmasters do take the time to critically analyze what Google tells us but more often than not we take the information at face value. We're too busy to stop and think about whether the information is right or not. We just accept it and get on with the job.

For most other people there isn't even a vague chance of them ever stopping to critically analyze what Google has told them. They accept what they're told whether it's right or not. What they ... and we ... don't stop to consider is that Google does get it wrong and by using an algorithm to rank sites there is a very good chance that Google gets it wrong more often than they get it right.

But we don't stop to consider that ... not even the government stops to consider that Google may not be getting things right.

Recently the Washington Post carried a story about the State Department and information that they got from Google. It seems that they were compiling a list of Iranians that they wanted to impose travel and business bans on because they were involved in the development of Iran's nuclear capabilities.

When the CIA wouldn't share the names with the State Department someone at the State Department went to Google and searched there. Search terms such as “Iran” and “nuclear” were used and eventually the names of 12 Iranians who appeared most often on the SERPS for those terms were listed.

However, there was one slight problem. When the CIA did finally offer up their list of people involved directly in the Iranian nuclear program the 12 names from the State Department's list were no where to be seen. It seems that the 12 names on the State Department list, the one they compiled by searching Google, were not the people the State Department should have been listing at all.

On Tuesday Steve and I both had to see our doctor for various ailments that we're afflicted with and he decided that it was time for Steve to do something about his cholesterol levels. They're not high but they are over the recommended level for someone of his age (he's old ... but don't tell him I said that ... he still thinks he's 18).

So the doctor prescribed a well-known anti-cholesterol drug and as he was writing out the prescription he warned us not to believe everything we saw on the Net about it. It seems that he's never seen one instance of a bad reaction to the drug and nor have many other doctors ... but you wouldn't know that if you searched Google.

Instead Google returns a lot of stories about very unpleasant side-effects. Now our doctor doesn't understand about search engine algorithms but he does understand that, in his words “the loudest voices make the most noise”.

And that's what we should be remembering too; after all we are supposedly the experts who understand how search engines work. We know how to make the system work for us so we need to critically analyze all the information that Google supplies when we search for something.

Sometimes those first few sites that we see listed really might contain the genuine information that we're looking for but then again, knowing what we know about search engines, would you like to stake your future on what Google tells you?

It's sad really that Google has reached the point where so many people accept what it says without question because it really is built on a flawed system that allows sites to reach prominence without ever being passed by a human reviewer. But no one thinks of that; instead all they see is that the site is listed at the top of Google and so it must be right.

And of course we can all trust Google to get it right ... can't we?