Radical meaning vs characters in use The radical 阜 and its other form 阝, used on the left, supposedly means mound or dam. Looking at image web search hits for 阜 or 阝, I get nothing related to dam or mound.

When I look up the Chinese translation of the words dam and mound, I get 水坝, 大坝, 土丘. None of which even contains 阜 or 阝.

What is going on? Are the Chinese trying to fool me? :)
Yes you do, you just have to look further down the results of Google image search (and I wasn't expecting the top most images =.=). However, I don't think 阜 means dam, but it does mean mound, though in 99% cases it would be 土丘 or some other words because 阜 does not appear in conversational Chinese as far as I know. You get images related to ears because 阝 looks like an ear.