Google’s Authorship Fail: How Truman Capote Was Credited As A NYT Writer 28 Years After His Death
Matt McGee on Search Engine Land:
If you happened to do certain abortion-related searches in the past few days, you might’ve been surprised to see the late Truman Capote getting Google+ Authorship credit for an article from The New York Times.
What makes it odd, of course, is that Capote died in 1984. He wrote numerous classics that showed up on the Times bestseller list but, as far as I know, he never actually wrote for the Times itself — and he certainly didn’t write an article that was first published in 2010.
I know firsthand that processing language is really dang difficult, so I have a ton of sympathy for Google for messing up the attribution of the article. But still, this is a pretty big yikes no matter which way you slice it.
Check the comments for some others who have had articles misattributed.