{
  "id": 13126084,
  "title": "I searched Google Hotels for a city that does not exist. It found five hotels.",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/09/i-searched-google-hotels-for-a-city-that-does-not-exist-it-found-five",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-10-09T13:44:10.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/garje/i-searched-google-hotels-for-a-city-that-does-not-exist-it-found-five-hotels-2el"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "On October 8th, the author was testing inputs that should fail by searching for cities that do not exist. They entered \"hotels in Qwzxvbnmplk\" into Google Hotels and received five hotel results near San Antonio, Texas, each with prices, ratings, and coordinates. The scraper charged for these priced hotels, even though the search input was nonsensical. The author discovered that Google always tries to answer a query, even if it cannot find an exact match, by showing hotels nearby. They implemented a fix that resolved the place first, skipped the search if no place was found, and added a field called \"resolvedPlace\" to identify the understood place. However, this fix broke a real capital city, Prague, as Google sent a page for Prague without its place data. The author then added a retry mechanism for missing places, but this still led to incorrect results. The author concludes by providing a simple check that can be used to validate the answers from various sources, such as geocoders, search APIs, or entity lookups.",
  "summary": "I typed \"hotels in Qwzxvbnmplk\" into my Google Hotels scraper to watch it fail. It did not fail. It came back with five hotels near San Antonio, Texas, each with a price, a rating and a map position. This is the story of that answer and the fix. It is also how my fix broke a real capital city, and the small check I now run before I trust any search result. A test that was supposed to fail On 8…",
  "key_points": [
    "Author tested non-existent city searches on Google Hotels",
    "Google provided five hotel results near San Antonio, Texas",
    "Fix implemented but caused issues with real city, Prague"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}