Fabius Maximus – Web Moron Of The Day

Fabius tells us that you can’t do Google news searches from the 19th century and that Google news hasn’t scrubbed their Goderich Obama stories from May

hurricane – Google Search

goderich obama – Google Search

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30 Responses to Fabius Maximus – Web Moron Of The Day

  1. Steve,

    I feel sorry for you. It’s sad to see someone reduced to your level. I clearly and specifically said that the archive and custom search features allow searching of the past Google News articles.

    “You don’t appear to using the archive function (which returns 32 hits for a “Goderich obama” search) You don’t say what specific item you’re looking for.”

    “There is the google news archive to find older material.”

    “You have to use Google News Archive or Custom Search to find older articles.”

    If you believed something was missing, find it on Google — identify it — and see why its not in the Google News archive. As Google Help explains, things get dropped for many reasons (I gave links to some explanations on Google Help).

    It’s this kind of behavior that has made the climate change issue the mess that it is.

    I’m done here. I wanted to learn about your website, and have learned what I wanted to know.

  2. redc1c4 says:

    fortunately for FM, Bing still turns up stories…

    http://www.bing.com/search?q=Goderich+Obama+&form=OSDSRC

    makes you wonder what’s up with Google?

  3. Adam Gallon says:

    If I do it (In the UK), I get
    goderich obama
    About 110,000 results (0.12 seconds)
    Top result is this.

    ‘Born in Kenya’: Obama’s Literary Agent Misidentified His Birthplace …

    abcnews.go.com › Politics › OTUS News

    by Dylan Stableford – in 130 Google+ circles

    18 May 2012 – Miriam Goderich edited the text of the bio; she is now a partner at the Dystel & Goderich agency, which lists Obama as one of its current clients.

  4. Heretic says:

    I get 140,000 hits – on a straight search using Bing.
    I trust Google less than Micro$haft.

  5. Richard T. Fowler says:

    Steven, is it possible that you have made an error in the below link that you posted to the other page? When I run it, I get over 2 million hits, but nothing on the first page is from the 19th century. Also, when I run the first link you gave for the Goderich Obama search, I get a bunch of stuff from August.

    I think it would be good if this could be cleared up, because there is a very, very large number of people out there (myself included) who have never tried to search Google News archive for a date range, and it’s really not possible to see any date range in the links you gave. So for a newcomer like myself to this issue, it can tend to give the impression that you may be misdirecting for some reason. If you are right, and Google has indeed purged that one story from a date-range-searchable list of articles, that is huge news, and a good link should be shown so that John Q. Public can confirm it for himself. Thank you for all hard word you have been doing on your blog.

    The link I tried to run for the 19th century:

    https://www DOT google DOT com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&q=hurricane+&oq=hurricane+&gs_l=news-cc.3..43j0i3l3j0l7j43i400.46116.48469.0.50748.10.5.0.5.5.0.179.614.2j3.5.0…0.0…1ac.4zvVRJEG9PY#q=hurricane&hl=en&gl=us&sa=X&ei=2BI3UO-8LYnTyAGIrIDICw&ved=0CCMQpwUoBg&source=lnt&tbs=cdr:1%2Ccd_min%3A1890%2Ccd_max%3A1895&tbm=nws&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=dfc8148b21c91330&biw=1792&bih=862

    • Richard T. Fowler says:

      * all the hard work

      Don’t know where that came from, sorry.

      RTF

    • No. I included links to both searches.I am making news searches during a specific time period

      • Richard T. Fowler says:

        So, if your links are not in error, why am I not getting what I am supposed to be getting?

      • Richard T. Fowler says:

        Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I just right clicked, “copy shortcut”, paste in browser and hit enter. I get results, it’s just not what I’m expecting based on the date ranges you’re stating.

        RTF

      • Richard T. Fowler says:

        All right, I have now done that as a test. I got the same results that I got when I right clicked and pasted. Here are the dates reported on the first page of articles returned:

        Huffington Post Canada – 2 days ago
        Fort McMurray Today – 6 days ago
        Benzinga – 3 days ago
        DigitalJournal.com (press release) – Aug 16, 2012
        Airdrie Echo – Aug 10, 2012
        DigitalJournal.com (press release) – 2 days ago
        Carman Valley Leader – 1 day ago
        Fort McMurray Today – 6 days ago
        Airdrie Echo – Aug 15, 2012
        Benzinga – 3 days ago

        That’s everything on the first page. As you can see, all of these are from August. So it gives (at least me) the impression that there may be something wrong with the link, causing Google News to default to the most recent articles.

        RTF

      • Richard T. Fowler says:

        Any idea why this is happening?

  6. Jason Calley says:

    I am not sure if this is pertinent, but for standard Google searches the results you receive depend in part on what past searches you have done. Is it possible that Google even massages the Google News archive results for different users?

    Remember, Google is not in the business of providing a product to YOU, they are in the business of selling YOU to their customers.

  7. Most of the confusion in the comments comes from 2 problems. 1) Folks are not replicating Steven in using Google News searches for May (a setting on the left hand side). This search used to result in several hits on the fact that his publisher said he was from Kenya. Now it returns nothing. If you don’t limit the search, you still get plenty of hits, but nothing from news stories about the publishers ‘Kenya’ mistake. 2) When you do a Google News search w/o the specific dates, Google returns a link at the top that is not part of the News search, but a general internet search. That result happens to be the ABC News story about the publisher’s Kenya mistake, so some are interpreting that to be a News result, when it is not. The News results appear below, and do not include the Kenya mistake story.

  8. mbabbitt says:

    Ok, I see what you are emphasizing. Use the Google News seach (not the web search) and there are no articles as one would expect. Starts with the Goderich Tornado.

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