Google Delivering Factual Answers

nam37 wrote in about a Macworld article which reads: "Google Inc. on Thursday began delivering factual answers for some queries at the top of its results page, to save users from having to navigate over to other sites and look for the information. For example, if a user enters the query 'Portugal population,' Google returns the answer -- 10.5 million -- along with a link to the Web page where the information came from, which in this case is the population page of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Factbook. The query 'who is Jane Fonda?' triggers the answer '... is an Academy Award winning American actress, model, writer, producer, activist and philanthropist' and provides the link to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia's entry for the actress. A small percentage of queries currently trigger these factual answers, but the service, called Google Q&A, is in its early stages, said Peter Norvig, Google's director of search quality."

AFP vs Google News

This is no doubt a good service for users, but will it attract complaints from site owners like AFP [slashdot.org]?

Personally I would rather get the answer without going into a site and read through things to find it, and if I want to, I can click on the link and find out more from the site. However the content providers will certainly want you to come to their sites as soon as possible, look around and maybe explore other sections?

EXAMPLE: What is a first post?

google query: what is a first post.

answer:

"First Post!" is a phenomenon of Internet discussion groups (notably Slashdot and LiveJournal), where participants strive to be the first person to add a comment ("post") to a new article or discussion thread. The phenomenon is largely confined to sites that have reached a high degree of popularity, such that users are genuinely surprised to see an article without any associated comments. There is also the necessary condition that comments are displayed in chronological order (meaning the first ...

Re:EXAMPLE: What is a first post?

Web definitions for Goatse Query: What is goatse?

google answer:

Goatse.cx (usually pronounced "goat-see dot see ex", often truncated to goatse, often referenced by one of its current URLs, goat.cx, occasionally called goatsex) is one of the most infamous Internet shock sites. Its front page contains a sexually explicit picture, hello.jpg, featuring a man wearing a gold ring on his left hand (and nothing else) manually stretching his anus and rectum to a diameter roughly equal to the width of his hand. Below the anus, the man's dangling penis and testicles ar

Re:EXAMPLE: What is a first post?

I know both of these are jokes, but this isn't actually the feature that is being refered to here. Rather this is what used to be the google glossary, you can use the define tag to get the definitions explicitly:
http://www.google.com/search?num=100& hl=en&lr=&c2c off=1&q=define%3Afirst%20post&btnG=Search

Re:EXAMPLE: What is a first post?

no, those are actual responses generated by the "glossary" feature which has been built in for about a year (and available longer under labs). You can use it with the 'define:' tag.

Test it out yourself, "define:us population" returns nothing, whereas it does return an answer on the google front page. They are awfully similar things it seems, I don't really know what the difference is per se (maybe answers are meant to be very short, exact, I dunno), but they are seperate features in Google..

Hell freezing over?

Has there ever been a slashdot thread in which a first post and goatse were on topic and insightful?

Not quite.

Try searching for "Who was the President of the United States in 1996" and you get Pat Choate. What a joke. Try it. [google.com]

Re:Not quite.

I did try it. When I read the sentence, it said, "Pat Choate was the 1996 Reform Party of the United States of America Vice President candidate."

It is not saying the person is the answer to your question, though I guess you might have to actually read what it says to discern that.

Hate to say it, but Microsoft has done this alread

Looks like google is the one playing catch up to microsoft this time. Microsoft search has had this feature since it was in beta. And it even gets teh president in 1996 question correct.

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=president+of+ united+states+in+1996&FORM=QBHP [msn.com]

Google's new math: What is 1/0 ?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=1%2F0&btnG=Go ogle+Search [google.com]Answer?

Satisfactory answers.

what is the answer to life, the universe, and everything? [google.com] although it comes from the Calculator, not from Q and A.

Heh

My query:
"Which search engine is the best?"

Google's response:
"AskJeeves."

Alpha indeed

"Portugal population" works, but "portugal population" does not, neither does "population of Portugal"

So it's not very robust yet.. But it looks promising.

At 7:41 pm eastern time...

So, how long do we think it will be exactly until the Google Pidgeon Clusters become self aware and begin to correlate all this data only to come up with 42, and a recipe for a nice cup of tea?

I'm completely unimpressed

It doesn't answer one of the most important questions of our modern times:

"What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"

Re:I'm completely unimpressed

Funny enough, ask.com used to. You'd put in the question and the first reply would be, "What do you mean, an African or European swallow?"

I think that as ask.com has come to be increasingly corporate that they've removed this unfortunately.

Great!

I've been curious about Britney's actual breast [lycos.co.uk] size for a long time now. Maybe Google will help us end this debate [liquidgeneration.com] once and for all.

Different sources have different presentations

Compare the formatting for the question from the article, who is jane fonda [google.com], with another question: what is google [google.com].

You can do a similar comparison between a couple of search terms from other postings: what is the slashdot effect [google.com] vs. who was president of the usa in 1996 [google.com].

Google (currently) appears to format answers it's sure about (what's google, what's the slashdot effect) with an icon and a link to "define:term". Fuzzier matches (Jane Fonda and the putative president) get the nonsequitur text "Property:" and an "According to:" disclaimer.

This looks like something interesting, but clearly still in the early beta. Which is *great*! I love getting a peek behind the curtain.

Do no evil is right...

Well I guess they really are out to do no evil, as this idea is completely counter-productive to the current way they make money, which is by essentially getting people to click paid for search results. If the answer i'm looking for is told to me right at the top, random people will be less likely to click "Find more Jane Fonda at Ebay.com"

It works!

How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck If a Woodchuck Could Chuck Wood? [google.com]

"As much wood as a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood"

Genius!

Movie Showtimes / Reviews

Probably old news to many but...

If you search for a title of a recent movie, or optionally add a ZIP code it will give you the aggregate out of five "star score" and a list of theaters and showtimes near you for the given film.

A search for "Robots 55419" yields the following:

Robots showtimes for 55419
1hr 30min - Rated PG - Animation/Comedy/SciFi/Fantasy - 58 reviews: (3.5 of 5 stars)

AMC Southdale 16 - 400 Southdale Center, Edina, MN - Map
11:10 1:30 4:00 6:30 9:15
AMC Mall of America 14 - 401 South Ave., Bloomington, MN - Map
1:20 2:20 3:40 4:40 6:40 7:40 9:20
More theaters ...

Pretty damned handy if you ask me!

Google "Robots 55419" Query [google.com]

Also, doing "NWA 0355" yields the status of Northwest Flight 0355 [google.com]...there are similar little things for weather [google.com] and even FedEx/UPS/USPS packages too.

Anybody aware of any other cools ones?

-AP

Re:And?

> Of course, there's a link to the site in question, but as is asked of Wikipedia all the time, what level of accountability is there that this information is correct?

Shh! The first time someone asked Google that, the damn thing went into recursive mode and blew out three server clusters before the sysadmin team could shut it down!

Re:And?

What was scary was I asked Google "Is there a God?" and it replied, "Yes. now there is a God." [alteich.com]

Re:And?

Also, how does it determine which sites are authoritative in this manner? Is this relevance automated, or are Google employees entering in sites that they see as authoritative on the matter. For that matter, what is their criteria for deeming a site accurate?

Basic research skills

Do not trust one source of information - always corroborate it with another source.

If one website says that the population of Portugal is 10.5 Million and another one says 20.5 Million, then there is obviously an error somewhere. If the second one says 10.1 Million, then you could probably live with the difference.

Of course, how many 'average users' trust everything they read on the internet blindly and would never think to question the information?

Even Pi is Suspect!

Type in "pi" and you get "pi = 3.14159265"

EVERYBODY knows it's 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375 10582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706 79821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081 28481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381 96442881097566593344612847564823378678316527120190 91456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412 73724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364 36

I hate it when they fudge data like that.