Namibia Is The Champion For The 2015 Rugby World Cup, Says Google Knowledge Panel

The 2015 Rugby World Cup has just started last September 18; however, Google knowledge panel has already listed Namibia's national rugby team as the champion.

Typing "2015 Rugby World Cup" on the search box will lead you to organic results. A knowledge panel on the right side contains Wikipedia's description of the tournament and under it is Namibia national rugby team listed as the champion with 13 matches played.

Stuff.co.nz reported on Monday there are no traces of adjustments made on the Wikipedia pages of both Rugby World Cup and Namibia national rugby team. The website also adds that unknown users can easily edit these pages for fun before these alterations can be taken down.

The SEMPost reported on August 13 how Google chooses the content that appears in the knowledge panel. John Mueller from Google says the information appearing in the knowledge panel is from different sources such as Wikipedia, Wikidata and the likes.

"Essentially we pick up this information from various sources like Wikipedia, Wikidata, Freebase and our algorithms then try and figure out whether or not it makes sense to show that information," he says. "And sometimes this is not really a technical decision in that since our algorithms might look at this and it probably doesn't make sense to show something specific from Wikipedia in the sidebar here."

Mueller goes on, "Or sometimes it might make sense to show something but we don't have that much information so we can't show anything."

"So I think by going through and making sure that the base information is available, you're doing the right thing there and the rest is not really something that depends on technical issues but rather on how we think this content might match what a user might be looking for."

On the other hand, reports reveal that Namibia national rugby team has never won a championship in the Rugby World Cup since joining in 1999.

The 2015 Rugby World Cup is hosted by England after beating rival bids Japan, Italy and South Africa. This year's tournament will conclude on October 31.