Google Search erroneously showing safe air quality in areas with low air quality

2 points by faut_reflechir 3 years ago | 3 comments

A search for

durham nc air quality forecast

yields a "featured snippet" from accuweather, saying (in its entirety):

"The air quality is ideal for most individuals; enjoy your normal outdoor activities."

Presumably this is cached; actually clicking into Accuweather shows that the air quality is Unhealthy at 111 right now.

Posting here in case someone has a switch to turn off the featured snippets for air quality searches (with different search terms, there seems to be great tooling with Google Maps).

dekhn 3 years ago |

I mean, the engineers who built the feature were promoted and moved on, so you can't really expect it to keep working if the world changes and the model isn't updating.

is_true 3 years ago |

I run a small service that provides info and every few weeks I got complaints from customers saying that the info is wrong because it doesn't match Google's.

The funny thing is that the problem is related to something else Google is doing, reducing the crawling budget.

logicalmonster 3 years ago |

Wow. Health misinformation from Google? Oh no. No no no.