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Last night Seattle Times posted an article on Wikipedia prankster confesses. It was picked up by Google and caught my attention when scanning the news.

It’s a story about Brian Chase from Nashville, Tenn. who put false information about John Seigenthaler Sr. in a Wikipedia entry. Wikipedia has its own entry on the controversy.

In short, the false entry was made in May, taken off in September. Unable to track down the person responsible, Mr. Seigenthaler wrote about the issue in an article on USA Today on November 29th. By December 11, 2005 Mr. Chase admitted he was responsible.

It’s not the first time misleading information has been found on Wikipedia. In November, Norwegian newspapers reported that, Jens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister of Norway, was descibed as as a pedofile on the Norwegian version of Wikipedia.

In response to the Seigenthaler incident Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales instituted a new policy preventing unregistered users from creating new articles on the English Wikipedia.

On December 7th I wrote about trusting what you find on the Internet. Wikipedia is probably of the more trustworthy sources and this underlines the importance of “User Beware”. There are many blogs, forums and websites out there where misinformation is spread on a regular basis.

I wrote that products like Sxore may be a part of the solution. I support Wikipedia’s new policy and hope that others will follow. While most of us still want free speech we also want some kind of accountability.

The bottom line? As a user - always double-check your sources! As a publisher - demand accountability from your editors or risk loosing accountability as a service.

roar at roarweb dot com

Sometimes you wonder about the results you get back when performing a web search.

Some search engines are better than others in finding relevant content. Even so, most people accepts the results that Google returns as the ultimate answers. I use Google as my home page, but still like to double-check their results with other search engines. And I do find additional information other places.

Tonight I’ve come across two situations where Search (in an expanded way) did not return the expected results.

Troy Angrignon describes some of the “long tail [wiki]” of search phrases used to guide readers to his site. Troy, who describes himself as an Adventure Capitalist, has had search phrases like “ some photos for hairy females armpit“ lead searchers to his site.

For those that wonder, Troy’s site is not about the female armpit. A more typical post would be Web 2.0: When do you use a forum, a blog, Jotspot, Writely, a wiki, or a full web 2.0 platform. My guess is the searcher did not find what he or she was looking for.

The second result was my own profile on zoominfo.com. In the right column ZoomInfo lists what they call “Colleague & Associates” This service is currently in a Beta. On the expanded “Colleagues” page it reads:

Colleagues lists are compiled automatically by ZoomInfo using natural language processing technology to determine relationships. For example, individuals we have found on the public Web who have served on the same management team can be labeled as colleagues by ZoomInfo.

Additionally, Colleagues are marked with icons as either “verified” or “unverified”. By default, all colleagues that ZoomInfo creates are unverified.

It’s Beta allright. Just as a poorly designed search phrase in Google is unlikely to return what was really searched for, so has the rule of “same management team” resulted in ZoomInfo filling my list with people I do not know. While they may have been with the same organizations(s), they were not there at the same time as me and thus I would not label them Colleagues.

While I understand that Beta stage services often have “room for improvement”, companies like ZoomInfo must consider how using such services on a “major page” (my profile!) impacts the customer experience. Now that I know some of their search results is gar… let’s say not that good, I have to take this into consideration when looking at their service in general.

To me, any customer interface must be seen as a part of the customer experience. In ZoomInfo’s case the result is a lowering of my trust in their results.

For many companies the problem with search engines are that they actually work, that they allow people to find their company site. It’s a problem if your site is not up to date, or the information found is incorrect. A company web site is, at least for me, an image of the company. I once suggested to a software developer that a few linking errors on their otherwise nicely done web site should be fixed. A few days later I was told off by a senior manager from the company - my unsolicited comments had upset his development team. I learned something about giving advice that day, but I still think that a software developer that does not care about easy to fix coding errors on their web site may be a developer to leave off your list of potential suppliers.

The bottom line is that Search returns results. These results are often not be what we expected. And this impacts the Customer Experience.

• It impacts the experience of using the search tool, often leading to a reduced trust in the results (which may be good as we should judge what we find).
• It also impacts the customer experience when a company cannot be found (either because they do not have a web site or because other companies has done a better job in content development and in search listing under specific keywords).

Even what we find impacts our experience. A web site is a part of the customer experience that helps us develop an image of a company and what to expect in “real, off-line life”. What do people find when they search for your company?

roar at roarweb dot com