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In this answer (via this meta question) the poster links to two google search result pages as part of their answer.
Is this a reasonable thing to do, or should we be discouraging it?

It seems awfully close to lmgfy and surely there are always better sources which could be linked to...

related: Discourage 'google for it' answers, How should we deal with Google questions?

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No, it's really not.

I don't think they add anything over the answer already says. Linking to external resources should be used in order to provide citations and references, or elaborate guidance.

When you're linking to a a Google search results page - you're not doing anything like that.

(I'm not even talking about the fact some of the results in the search results are downright bad and wrong)

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  • (I agree) should it be discouraged? if so, how? Disallow links to google in answers?
    – hayd
    Commented Jul 3, 2013 at 23:44
  • @hayd I think it's a matter of etiquette. There are plenty of useful things for developers on Google. Style guides, references, developer pages for building things with google related products, app engine related things. Even in a more general StackExchange sense, Google books for example can be used to provide a citation from a book some times. Google should not be disallowed in links. Google search on the other hand I'm not sure about, questions might be related to Google search APIs and filters in StackOverflow. I think it should be left to the community to deal with offenders.
    – Benjamin Gruenbaum
    Commented Jul 3, 2013 at 23:49
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    Not to mention the results change over time and even are different per person
    – PeeHaa
    Commented Jul 4, 2013 at 0:05

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