Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

October 7, 2015

Search Correctness? [Right to be Forgotten, Hiding in Plain Sight]

Filed under: Search Engines,Searching — Patrick Durusau @ 9:32 pm

Everyone has an opinion about “political correctness,” but did you know that Google has “search correctness?”

This morning I was attempting, unsuccessfully, to search for:

fetch-search

Here is a screen shot of my results:

fetch-xml-results

I happen to know that “fetch:xml” is an actual string in Google indexed documents because it was a Google search that found the page (using other search terms) where that string exists!

I wanted to search beyond that page for other instances of “fetch:xml.” Surprise, surprise.

Prior to posting this, as a sanity check, I searched for “dc:title.” And got hits!? What’s going on?

If you look at: Metatags.org, you will find them using:

DC.title, DC.creator, etc. Replacing the “:” (colon) with a “.” (period).

That solution is a non-starter for me because I have no control over how other people report fetch:xml. One assumes they will use the same string as appears in the documentation.

As annoying as this is, perhaps it is the solution to the EU’s right to be forgotten problem.

People who want to be forgotten can change their names to punctuation that Google does not index.

Once their names are entirely punctuation, these shy individuals will never be found in a Google search.

Works across the globe with no burden on search engine operators.

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