Google Feature Snippet: Pyramids Are 85 Years Old

Every now and then I like to highlight when Google gets it wrong with their featured snippets. It is really a daily occurrence but here is a funny one. If you ask Google how old are the pyramids, Google will tell you they are 85 years old. Of course, if you look at the text of what Google is showing you, you can see Google is answering a different question here.

Here is a screen shot:

Bing handles it differently but not extracting what it thinks to be the answer in this case and rather just shows this result:

You see, both Google and Bing are sourcing the same web site but they show the answer differently to the searcher.

Again, Google's featured snippets get it wrong a ton but way more often than not, they get them right.

Danny Sullivan from Google did respond saying they will look into it:

Thanks, this has been passed on. The page itself and the snippet make it clear that 85 years obviously isn't the age. We've picked up the wrong part to highlight and will look to improve.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) December 17, 2018

Forum discussion at Twitter.