Martin Belam

29 March
2007


Google putting Wikipedia extracts at #1 - for Bruce Hornsby anyway

I've only noticed this once when using Google recently, but it looks like they have been playing with putting direct extracts from Wikipedia in at #1 in their search results.

20060326_hornsby-top-result.gif

It doesn't look like a sponsored result i.e. advert, but the call-out where the "URL - size - Cached link - Similar pages link" metadata would usually be is distinctive and different:

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Hornsby
20060326_hornsby-wiki-link.gif

Perhaps it was just a ploy to detract from the fact that at #3 in the organic results was a copyright takedown notice against their own YouTube service from Bruce Hornsby himself ;-)

20060326_honrsby-youtube.gif