Strange ThinkPad Google Searches [IMAGE WARNING]

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hunterman223 · #1 Post by **hunterman223** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 6:01 pm

For some reason when I type in the model number of a thinkpad, for example the T400 or X200, I get strange PDF file results like below. It has been like this for a really long time. When clicked on, the link opens a normal Lenovo PDF file without the strange lettering. Does anyone know why?

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Z ... directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/3 ... directlink

I can't get the image to embed properly using the IMG tag. By the way, how does one add a thumbnail image that links to a full size image?

#2 Post by **RealBlackStuff** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 7:55 pm

If you use Firefox, apply this add-on Lenovo MTM: http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search-engine ... Lenovo+MTM
That'll give you the proper laptop-info all the time.

yak · #3 Post by **yak** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:32 pm

The weird casing is probably a side effect of Googlebot trying to do its best to extract the document title from PDF contents. In this case it seems to come from the heading written using this funny looking font. The PDF format defines a "title" property for this but the title is empty for this particular PDF.

hunterman223 · #4 Post by **hunterman223** » Thu Apr 14, 2011 6:03 am

Hmm, strange. Both links seem to lead to the same place, just wondered what was up.

#5 Post by **RealBlackStuff** » Thu Apr 14, 2011 8:54 am

It may have something to do with the Character Encoding you are using.
In Firefox, click on View/Character Encoding
Select Western (ISO-8859-1) or Unicode (UTF-8).
I use Unicode, no probs whatsoever.

penartur · #6 Post by **penartur** » Thu Apr 14, 2011 9:28 am

RealBlackStuff wrote:It may have something to do with the Character Encoding you are using.
In Firefox, click on View/Character Encoding
Select Western (ISO-8859-1) or Unicode (UTF-8).
I use Unicode, no probs whatsoever.

Character encoding has nothing to do with the problem in subject. Character encoding is about converting bytes to letters, and from the OP screenshot it could be seen that there are correct letters. The problem is not in which letters are shown but rather in how are they shown

hunterman223 · #7 Post by **hunterman223** » Thu Apr 14, 2011 7:19 pm

Maybe someone at Lenovo developed a severe case of boredom.

I guess it isn't a big deal or anything, just something strange I noticed. I can reproduce the strange results on multiple computers, operating systems, and devices, so it must either be Google's cache or Lenovo's server acting up.

#8 Post by **rkawakami** » Thu Apr 14, 2011 7:56 pm

Using FireFox 4 and Google, I searched for the T400 PDF file and it also shows the strange casing of the letters.

hunterman223 wrote:By the way, how does one add a thumbnail image that links to a full size image?

Here's the format on how to specify inline thumbnail images that when clicked on gives you the full-sized image:

(url=URL of large pic)(img)URL of thumbnail(/img)(/url)

Change all parentheses to square brackets to get the proper phpBB codes. Do not use any quotes around the URLs.

hunterman223 · #9 Post by **hunterman223** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 5:14 am

Thanks, just what I was looking for.

yak · #10 Post by **yak** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 6:27 am

There's no "acting up" here and the browser and its settings have nothing to do with this. I explained this in the first post. Just open this PDF and copy&paste the heading using the funny font into Notepad, you will see the funny casing.

hunterman223 · #11 Post by **hunterman223** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 8:25 am

Ah, I see what you mean now. Googlebot is seeing the strange font wrong, and "translates" it to what we are seeing in the google search.