> "But for information-seeking queries, Google tries to give you organic results." No, often it absolutely doesn't, and I posted two epic fails here previously

> "But for information-seeking queries, Google tries to give you organic results." No, often it absolutely doesn't, and I posted two epic fails here previously. Worse still, Google organic results no longer understand(/distinguish) the difference between information-seeking queries vs product searches (or else, SEO people have been gaming it for years, and Google search rankings have made this worse): ____________________________________________________________ 1) Google search relevance fail: result for “Africa longitude” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30337563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30337563 Googling for "Africa longitude" should return a range of longitudes, like: "17.5°W - 51.5°E" or "["17°31′13″W - 51°27′52″E"]" [1], or for the A+ answer: *"Africa lies between 17°33'22" W, (Cape Verde, westernmost point) and 51°27'52" E, (Ras Hafun, Somalia, easternmost projection). But it doesn't. Moreover these coordinates haven't substantially changed in 10,000 years (other than political/territorial disputes about islands, but the coords for the mainland certainyl haven't). Googling returns the grossly misleading "Africa/Coordinates 8.7832° S, 34.5085° E". When you dig into why this so, it seems to be "optimized" for the SEO activities of a digital map storefront, MapsofWorld.com, acquired by MapSherpa Inc., based in Ottawa. And those mystery nonsense coordinates ("8.7832° S, 34.5085° E") bizarrely point not even to the geographical centre of Africa but to a random rural location 2400km ESE away, in southern Tanzania, which appears to have been deceptively mislabeled, in Cyrillic, as a Russian store (by Russian SEO?). For a pin dropped in rural Tanzania. No QA! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30337563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30337563 ____________________________________________________________ Similarly: 2) Google search for "How many landings on dark side of moon" is grossly incorrect https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40862146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40862146 (Update: the AI overview factbox has at least since been corrected to give Two: "Chang'e 4 (January 3, 2019) and Chang'e 6 (2024), instead of repeating what jagranjosh.com says). However the #1 organic search hit is still the woefully inaccurate unauthoritative page: https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/list-of-all-successful-moon-missions-1568103956-1 https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/list-of-all-suc... which cheerfully claims "Aug 23, 2023 — There are over 21[!!] moon missions that have been launched successfully on the dark side of the moon by 4 countries." This is hopelessly wrong, even if we utterly misunderstood the key word "landing" and also count any mission which merely photographed the dark side (Luna 3, 1959) or human overflight over it (Apollo 8, 1968). But not "landing". And why on earth did Google decide jagranjosh.com was more authoritative than any reference website or wiki? ____________________________________________________________ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa#Geology,_geography,_ecology,_and_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa#Geology,_geography,_eco...