Google factbox for "How many landings on dark side of moon" is grossly incorrect

2 points

2 years ago

When you Google for "How many landings on dark side of moon", the factbox and #3 are grossly incorrect, and appear to have been doctored for SEO juice by later adding "dark side of the Moon" [0]. This seems to have been up for 4.5 years though [1], so it predates GenAI. Surprised it escaped scrutiny. How much scepticism should we apply to Google factboxes these days? (I guess this is the same trend as WSJ, 2017 "Google Has Picked an Answer for You–Too Bad It’s Often Wrong"/"Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions"[2])

[0]: https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/list-of-all-successful-moon-missions-1568103956-1

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20190911192622/https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/list-of-all-successful-moon-missions-1568103956-1

* Originally the page was "List of all Successful Moon Missions" (Sep 10 2019) "Till date there are 20 moon missions have been launched successfully by the 3 countries."

* Then around Nov 1, 2019 it was changed to "List of all Successful Moon Missions on dark side of the Moon" "Till date there are 20 moon missions have been launched successfully on the dark side of the moon by the 3 countries... The first successful moon was Luna 2 which was launched by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on 12 September 1959. While the first successful manned mission (Apollo 11) was launched by the USA on 16 July 1969. Read this article to know the full details of all the successful moon missions..."

* If the incorrect claims of "dark side of the Moon" were removed, the article and site would be okay. (but that's the key phrase that is misleading Google's factbox)

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15721466

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