Google Showing Weird Title for Wikipedia Article

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September 17, 2009

Google Showing Weird Title for Wikipedia Article

Sometimes I like to point out weird anomalies in the Google search results. A search for [lufthansa fleet] returns a Wikipedia listing to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa. The issue is, the way Google lists out the snippet and title is all weird:

Why does it show it like that? What does wxloop mm5aq_stata_pm25gt65 2008112700///1 mean? Why no snippet?

JohnMu from Google said it isn't visible everyone, but it is just one of those strange anomalies. He said:

Thanks for bringing this up! I've passed it on to a team here to review. As far as I can tell, this is just a strange fluctuation that's not visible everywhere.

I bet an SEO can figure the issue out pretty quickly.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

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posted rustybrick in Google Optimization at September 17, 2009 8:23 AM Comments (5)

Comments

I can see this strange title in SERPs, but without oneline sitelink below title.

I can see "wxloop mm5aq_stata_pm25gt65 2008112700///1" as title for en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa URL.

-DS

Posted by No Name at September 17, 2009 08:37

It is still visible from our end. We think it is an error from Google's end as opposed to Wiki, Looks like some kind of hash, perhaps Google's internal index/URL ID. At the level of data that Google has, numerical ID’s become worthless and so db rows tend to use hashes as their unique identifiers.

The timestamp kind of implies that too (although it’s pretty old... 20081127). It could be that the row has become corrupted and the URL title can’t be pulled out of the index, so the SERP is reverting to the hash instead.

Seen a thread on it in Webmasters support, JohnMu replied stating that it was a 'strange fluctuation'. Interested to hear anyone elses feedback.

Posted by Tobias at September 17, 2009 09:25

I can also see the unusual title in my search. Perhaps Wikipedia is about to melt down, under the unbearable stress of all the evil it promulgates?

Posted by Gregory Kohs at September 17, 2009 13:18

Appears perfect from here..

Posted by Anand at September 18, 2009 00:59

It looks ok here, so they have figured it out, or my datacetre shows it differently.

Posted by Peter at September 18, 2009 06:57