When Good Search Engines Go Bad (03 Mar 2005)

Usability Views Article Details

When Good Search Engines Go Bad (03 Mar 2005)
What's all the hubbub about? A couple of little blue links. AutoLink is part of the new beta version of the Google toolbar. It's possible to disable AutoLink with a single mouse click, but if you do keep it turned on the toolbar will crawl each page you surf for mailing addresses, book ISBN numbers, auto VIN numbers, and package tracking numbers. If a restaurant publishes its address, Google links that to a map. If an author's Web site lists her books by ISBN number, each one becomes a link to Amazon's page for the book. Why only this oddball collection of items? Because they can be reliably identified and have only one correct match. Google won't try to link "Paul Boutin" to anything because it can't distinguish between me and Mariah Carey's recording engineer.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2114308/

Read 39 more articles from Slate sorted by date, popularity, or title.

Next Article: A 3D production pipeline for special effects in TV and film

Some of the people who make up the Userati group

This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy

BBCi: Javascript is not available on this browser