While researching an article I wrote this morning about Google’s privacy changes and their implications, I couldn’t help but notice a huge fail on Google’s part in terms of relevancy. It seemed worth sharing.

You would think a search for “google privacy” might deliver Google’s privacy policy as the top result – or at least something directly from the company about their new policy. Something official.

Nope.

Here’s what I got with “Search Plus Your World” turned enabled:

And here’s with SPYW turned off:

It’s not much better. Some have argued that SPYW has harmed Google’s search results in terms of relevancy. That may be the case in some instances, but it doesn’t appear to have been much of a factor this time. It looks like the “freshness update” can harm it too, as Google seems to be favoring recent media stories about its privacy changes more prominently than the privacy policy itself.

Or maybe they just think searchers are more interested in commentary about the changes, than seeing the official documents. That’s not what I was looking for in this case. Maybe it’s my faut. I could’ve added the word “policy” to the query.

Well, that’s only slightly better.

Google is not perfect. It acknowledges this, but you would think that when searching for something from Google itself, you would get that. Perhaps this is Google’s way of showing it doesn’t favor its own results.