9,000 Google hits can't be wrong - or can they? By Lionel Beehner. Christian Science Monitor (Feb 27, 2004) - criticizes journalists for practicing "reportorial Googling" rather than sound research for their stories.
The crux of the matter -- "True, Google is a handy and smart website as well as an excellent starting place to gather background information or to brainstorm for story ideas (or, for that matter, a fun way to spy on friends and exes). But it's neither a scientific nor accurate tool to gauge a subject's popularity. Its data can be faulty, fleeting, and, as any doctoral student or fact-checker knows, terribly inaccurate. Not only because the search engine brings up blogs and message boards and Bob Andrews's freshman term paper on Western civilization - none of which was probably fact- or spell-checked - but because its hit-counts fluctuate faster than poll numbers in Iowa."
Posted by Gwen at February 27, 2004 11:12 AM