Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Google Bug : Interface language affect a lot the positionning of the results

Another weird bug at Google almost unknown. The language of the interface modify a lot the positionning of the results even of local declinaisons. (like google.ca, google.fr, etc).
Here a example with Google.com : http://www.google.com/search?&q=top%20challenge%20montreal%202007

My picture blog (vupar.blogspot.com) on this query got the 25e position.

But now, go to the preference and change the Interface Language to French :

Get back in the first page of results : Tadam ! Vupar.blogspot now showing in first place !

Soem countries like Switzerland or India have a lot of common language used there. Not very easy to know in which position a page are ?!?

Note: If you don't wan't to pass by the preference you can add &hl=en (english) or &hl=fr (french) at the end of the resulting URL

3 comments:

Martin Lessard said...

Wasn't that a feature? I did notice it a while ago and was wondering when this would come up on the table.

I'm glad you brought it. So far I use this "bug" as a way to filter content (per language, incidently) and as an "serendipity agent"...

Martin Lessard said...

PS: (was to hurry to press submit)

As far as I'm concern, as Google didn't fixed it yet (we are in mid-november) I rather say it's really the way Google what it to be...

Any reasons why?

Eric Baillargeon said...

I waiting for an explication from a friend of a friend at the GooglePlex !