The Unbearable Randomness of Google Scholar, Ongoing

Things Google Scholar doesn't understand:

1) People misspelling your name.  (There's no "n" in the middle of Burstein.  I know this.  Google knows this.  Other academics do not always know this.)

2) Random stuff missing from one's bibliography.  (Several of my publications can be found in Google Scholar...just not anywhere in my citation list.)  

3) Book citations.  (Google may be scanning everything in sight, but their ability to identify citations in books continues to be, er, terrible.)

4) Citations to blog posts.  (That "Rules for Writing Neo-Victorian Novels" post? Has a lot of citations.  Some of them to me by name.  [Incidentally, this is not an anonymous blog; if you're going to cite one of my posts, please use my name, not "Little Professor."]  Google Scholar apparently doesn't think of these as "publications," all use to the contrary.)  

5) The existence of multiple editions of one novel.  (There's more than one edition of Robert Elsmere out there! Really!)

Comments

[Mr Punch]

It's interesting that Google, which began with a search engine, is so much worse at it than Amazon.