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Home » Google » Google Doesn’t Understand What None Means

Google Doesn’t Understand What None Means

Posted on June 8, 2015 Written by Bill Hartzer

I was searching and looking through the SERPs of some of the people I hung out with last week at SMX Advanced in Seattle. I noticed a rather odd thing showing up in the search results for David Iwanow, where the word “none” is showing up several times in the SERPs (search results pages). Take a look:

David Iwanow

This is the knowledge graph entry that shows up next to the search results. For David Iwanow’s entry, he has this showing up:

Children: None
Siblings: None

It all makes sense to us, right? David has no children, and he has no siblings. But if you look further, you’ll notice this:

David Iwanow people search

Well, apparently people also search for “None”. Yes, “none”. Google apparently doesn’t really understand what none means.

People who search for David also search for me, and that would make sense because we’re in the same industry. But where does Google get the information that people also search for “none”? Well, apparently they don’t actually get that information from the search history. Because, frankly, I don’t think that people would actually search for the word “none”. It’s just not feasible.

So, looking into this further, it appears that Google is (still) taking this information from Freebase.com, as that’s where the original information (None) appears:

David Iwanow freebase

Here’s David Iwanow’s freebase page: http://www.freebase.com/m/01025462

What makes sense is that since the word “None” is actually a Freebase page, and has been designated as a Freebase entity, a part of the knowledge graph that actually has an entry, Google is interpreting “None” as an entity. And not “none” as in “nothing”. So, when Google shows us that people also searched for “none”, then there’s a good chance that Google could be using data from Freebases searches; and/or they could be relating clicks on the “None” entry on David Iwanow’s Freebase page (or on the search results page) to actual searches for “None”.

Whatever the case, and whatever the reason behind Google showing “None” as something that people also search for, doesn’t really matter. What matters to me is that Google truly doesn’t really understand the meaning of “None”. With all the technology behind semantic search and the knowledge graph coming into play here, you’d think that Google understands what “None” means.

But apparently not.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engines



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Bill Hartzer is CEO of Hartzer Consulting, LLC, an SEO Consulting firm that includes services such as search engine optimization, technical SEO audits, domain name consulting, and online reputation management.

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