diff --git a/ox/web/imdb.py b/ox/web/imdb.py
index c46a117..2547d86 100644
--- a/ox/web/imdb.py
+++ b/ox/web/imdb.py
@@ -802,7 +802,7 @@ def get_episodes(imdbId, season=None):
 
 def max_votes():
     url = 'http://www.imdb.com/search/title?num_votes=500000,&sort=num_votes,desc'
-    data = cache.read_url(url)
+    data = cache.read_url(url).decode('utf-8', 'ignore')
     votes = max([
         int(v.replace(',', ''))
         for v in re.compile('<span name="nv" data-value="(\d+)"').findall(data)
diff --git a/ox/web/wikipedia.py b/ox/web/wikipedia.py
index beacdac..cb73758 100644
--- a/ox/web/wikipedia.py
+++ b/ox/web/wikipedia.py
@@ -116,7 +116,7 @@ def get_movie_data(wikipedia_url):
 
 def get_image_url(name):
     url = 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:' + name.replace(' ', '%20')
-    data = read_url(url)
+    data = read_url(url).decode('utf-8')
     url = find_re(data, 'href="(http://upload.wikimedia.org/.*?)"')
     if not url:
         url = find_re(data, 'href="(//upload.wikimedia.org/.*?)"')
@@ -145,7 +145,7 @@ def find(query, max_results=10):
     url = "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?" + urllib.parse.urlencode(query)
     data = read_url(url)
     if not data:
-        data  = read_url(url, timeout=0)
+        data = read_url(url, timeout=0)
     result = json.loads(data.decode('utf-8'))
     results = []
     if result and 'query' in result: