Always Behind the Times

The New York Times declared that Google has repaired ("a major change to its algorithm," says the story) to banish low-quality scam sites. There's a link to another story about two weeks ago explaining how the vaunted, superintelligent Google search algorithm can be manipulated. Both these stories were in the tech section.

One of the odd things is that the paper seems to have forgotten its story also about two weeks ago about how J.C. Penney received extraordinary treatment in Google search results. Penney blamed a search engine optimizing outfit for the scam, and Google retaliated by dropping Penney to below the horizon. Well, maybe reporters don't read much of the paper outside their own sections. The Penney Story was in the biz section.

Google Tweaks Algorithm to Push Down Low-Quality Sites

Anyway, what's the Times had to say.

I guess Google has more work to do. Abortion rights folks clued the web site Jezebel into the fact that if you search for the word "murder" on Google, the Number 2 result is a link to Wikipedia's nonpartisan, informational page on abortion.

It's a clear case of Google bombing -- which is general terms is to get enough people with websites, that is blogs, two-bit organizations, anyone with a few bucks and the patience to follow instructions to link to your site, someone else's site, a prank site. In this case, right-wingers getting Google to unwittingly make their lunatic point on abortion. It doesn't take a genius to know how to outwit the geniuses at Google, does it?

Anti-Choicers Link "Murder" to "Abortion" on Google.

Who wants to buy into a pool about how long it takes for the Times to run a story on how politics are being polluted by hi-tech tricks?

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