LISNews: Librarian News

Why Google and Other Humans Don't Read Your Book Reviews:

Try running this very specific Google search - "Manhood" by Mels van Driel review - and you will not find the L.A. Times among the results - at least not within first three pages that humans would care to flip through. How come might you ask? Well the answer is simple - there is nothing whatsoever that tells Google that this post is a book review about this particular book.

And this is not just an isolated problem with this book review from this particular newspaper. The issue is widespread across all major U.S. and international media outlets. Either due to lack of tools or lack of understanding how search engines and other software works, people notoriously don't make their content discoverable.