![]() However, a bare url that no longer works may render an online source useless). is still valid even if the website is discontinued. It has become a practice in deletion discussions to quote a Google search or Google News search and say "look at all the results, there's your references" or "Two thousand Google hits, must be notable!" However, Google provides everything that can be found online, a huge majority of which are by no means reliable sources, and Google News reprints large swathes of material which may or may not be reliable, may or may not be relevant to the subject of the article, and may or may not still be there by the time the AfD closes (note that a full citation of a news article found online, with the author, title, newspaper name, etc. There are other URL modifiers that can be used as well. This will "turn off" personalized search results such as personal search history, habits, present geographical location, and other personalized factors. If personalization is not by-passed the results are highly personalized to the individual thus giving erroneous search results as for as Wikipedia is concerned.Ī way to minimize large hits or "personalized search results" is to add "&pws=0" to the end of a search query. A main factor in business ranking is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and most businesses with a web presence use SEO to some degree. The two main types of "Google Search Features" are content type and enhancements. With Google Ads a business bids on choice words (keywords) to have their business placed higher in the search results ranking. Many businesses depend wholly on advertising for their income. This was due to various services such as Adwords (proprietary advertising service as an auction system) that is a part of almost all of Google’s web properties, the AdSense program, Ad Manager and Google Ad Manager 360. Google advertising resulted in $110.8 billion in revenue in 2017. It was estimated in 2013 that there was "2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day which has likely been far surpassed.Īlmost all Google search results follow one main theme which is the advertising factor. The 2014 estimated Google database size of 10 exabytes (one exabyte= one billion Gigabytes) is likely now far surpassed with a 2019 estimated size of around 61.5 billion pages. While Wikipedia strives to present knowledge to the world free of charge Google does not follow philanthropic business principles but relies on advertising. Raw search result numbers are often inflated to include many variables that can create large hit results. There are various reasons why using just the numbers of a Google search may be misleading ("there were 204,000 search results") concerning the establishment of notability. While all of them may not be able to be viewed on the Google site itself, and many of them are previews, the search can at least show that the sources exist. Google News, Google Books, and Google Scholar provide results that are more likely to be reliable sources, but only if these hits are able to be verified and are reliable sources by reading the articles or books. Most probably, the majority of these will not count as reliable sources. When performing a plain web search, it is possible that a lot of hits will turn up. On the other hand, a reality TV contestant's name may generate a thousand Google hits–fan chat pages and blog posts regarding his or her sex life–but none of these may be reliable sources. In fact, this theory may be notable under Wikipedia's rules, as it is described in multiple reliable sources. But no Google hits does not mean that this theory is non-notable or a hoax. While such searches are indeed a very useful starting point, they do not in themselves determine notability or the lack thereof.Īn obscure 1700s philosophical theory that is referenced in a number of widely respected older paper books may not show up on a Google search. It may be easy to view a subject as being notable solely because a Google search produces a huge number of hits, not notable because the search produces very few hits, or a hoax because it produces none at all. A Google search using the title or keywords of an article or subject has become known as a "Google test". One of the biggest fallacies in determining the notability of a subject, which is part of determining whether a topic should have its own Wikipedia article, is the view that the results of a Google search alone can be used to assess notability. Google searches and numbers can be used to help identify a subject to ascertain WP:notability. But that is not a factor in determining the letter or word a's notability for getting its own Wikipedia article. A Google Search of the letter "a" produced over 12 billion hits.
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