Nyagoslav (think Cher, Michael, Brittany, etc.) gets all OCD on my recent post where I used our NAP Hunter extension to surface some bogus N.A.P. data issues. He really peels back the rotten onion:

“The NPI registry is one of the most trustworthy data sources in the medical industry, so the chances that this was the initial source of the bad data are very high. What is of particular interest is the fact that the NPI record was last updated on December 15, 2011, more than two and a half years ago, and there are still listings online that feature that outdated information.”

and

“Since I know that Citysearch gets data from InfoGroup, this lead me to guess that there was a listing on Infogroup that might have featured the incorrect information, but had been updated at some point in the past on ExpressUpdate.com. And, if so, it’s possible that the data made its way to Google via Infogroup, which is an official data partner of Google.

But I was left with the remaining questions:

  1. Where did Infogroup get the data from?
  2. Where did Factual get the data from?”

I have four reactions to Nyago’s work:

  1. I agree that my superficial analysis may not have solved the mystery
  2. While InfoGroup and Acxiom may have direct feeds into Google, Nyago does not take into account that Google’s crawlers may have found the data on its own from any number of sources and taken it as the source of truth. Only Google knows for sure at this point.
  3. Solving problems with bad N.A.P. data sucks. It’s the equivalent of taking a pork chop to a gun fight.
  4. Nyago should seek professional help for his unhealthy obsession. I am thinking a G+ Hangout Intervention this Wednesday at 11am PT. + me if you’re in.

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11 Response Comments

  • Phil Rozek  August 25, 2014 at 3:04 pm

    I think you and Nyagoslav need to have a NAP rap battle 🙂

    My reading of his post is that in this case the NPI registry is the source for InfoGroup and Acxiom. ‘Course, I could have missed something…

  • Andrew Shotland  August 25, 2014 at 4:02 pm

    It may have been, but there’s no evidence that it was – he was referring to an updated NPI profile, but there’s no way of knowing if that profile had the bad data to begin with, or at least there’s no easy way to know it.

  • Phil Rozek  August 25, 2014 at 4:40 pm

    True, true.

  • Nyagoslav  August 26, 2014 at 3:13 am

    Hey Andrew, I’d be more than happy to have a discussion on this issue (and similar ones). However, 11am PT would be 9pm at my place, which might be a little tough. Are you available around 9am PT?

  • bill bean  August 26, 2014 at 8:37 am

    Unsolved NAP Mysteries…the only question is which channel will it air on?

    Hangout sounds good. Count me in.

  • Russ Offord  August 26, 2014 at 4:27 pm

    The Factual listing now 404s, so I couldn’t see it… but… did it perhaps have any crosswalk data attached to it?

    Would Factual be so nice as to show you (or would they even have) any sort of edit history on the listing? 🙂

    Russ

  • Andrew Shotland  August 26, 2014 at 5:21 pm

    I think it did have Crosswalk data but not much

  • Nyagoslav  August 27, 2014 at 1:11 am

    It had a Crosswalk link to the Citysearch listing.

  • Kevin Chow  August 27, 2014 at 11:39 am

    Did I miss the hangout?

  • Andrew Shotland  August 27, 2014 at 12:15 pm

    No hangout yet. Nyago, I’ll make it happen next week. Dealing with 7 pages of dupe issues at the moment.

  • Eddie  September 2, 2014 at 7:45 am

    The NAP Showdown! When is this happening?