Mathias Schindler wrote:
On 1/3/07, cohesion <cohesion(a)sleepyhead.org>
wrote:
It looks like google is pulling some information
from wikipedia in a
pseudo semantic way,
http://www.google.com/search?c2coff=1&q=hd+dvd+capacity&btnG=Search
from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD
Am I just noticing this, or is it new?
Well, the feature itself is not new. It seems, however, that google is
now automatically parsing info-box information, in this case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_media
This way,
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGG…
is working too, since
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax contains
Betamax Media type: Video recording media
Encoding: Magnetic tape
Developed by: Sony
Usage: Video storage
Try googling:
Betamax Usage
GD-ROM media type
VHS encoding
and so on (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Infobox_media)
So in order to find more of these shortcuts, one should check the
infoboxen on en.wp
Mathias
So Google has basically created a database of all Wikipedia's infoboxes,
and is serving up entries from them as search results on its website?
Does this count as mirroring our content? Are they in compliance with
whatever rules apply to whatever it is they're doing?
Aside from that, something concerns me here. These snippets are
displayed right at the top of search pages, above the search results,
even when the Wikipedia article itself is nowhere near the top search
result. In other words, anyone who manages to sneak the right value in
at the critical moment when Google is re-indexing the page can achieve
an effect similar to a [[Googlebomb]], but even more powerful. How long
before people start craftily changing infobox labels and values in an
attempt to abuse this?
*blocks self for WP:BEANS violation*
-Gurch