Ever get annoyed at how Old News pops up when you do a search? How it's hard to find a recent story sometimes, or something old even gets the wrong date stamp?
A 2002 story on a UAL bankruptcy came back and people thought it had just happened, causing their stock to plunge.
Google and Tribune pass blame around on UAL
Commentary: Timestamps should become part of Web stories and algorithms
By MarketWatch
Last update: 4:12 p.m. EDT Sept. 11, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The blame game between Google Inc. and Tribune Co. dragged on Thursday, as everyone involved scrambles to explain how an old news story on UAL Corp.'s 2002 bankruptcy resurfaced on the Internet via Google's automated crawler, leading to a huge plunge in UAL's stock.
Now the Securities and Exchange Commission is getting into the mix, opening a preliminary probe into the drop in UAL's stock, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday afternoon. See Wall Street Journal story.
One thing does seem clear in the debacle. An accurate timestamp, with the date and time of a news story, should be clear on all news stories on the Web, and this should also be part of the criteria in Google's complex algorithms that crawl news stories for its Google News.
Tribune Co. in Chicago said that Google's automated search agent, called Googlebot, was unable to differentiate between breaking news and frequently viewed stories on the Web sites of its newspapers. Tribune said it had asked Google months ago to stop using its Googlebot to crawl newspaper Web sites, including the online version of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Sun-Sentinel, where the UAL story was retrieved. See full story.
However, Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker, in speaking with a MarketWatch reporter denied that the Tribune had asked the search giant to stop crawling its newspaper sites.
Part of the problem seems to be due to the lack of a clear timestamp with the correct date on the Chicago Tribune story about UAL filing for bankruptcy in 2002, which surfaced as one of the most read stories on the Sun-Sentinel over the weekend, even though the article received a single visit during a very low traffic time.
Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget posted a copy of the Tribune story, as it appeared on the Sun-Sentinel Web site over the weekend, and there was no clear date or timestamp on the 2002 bankruptcy story. Would
Googlebot have picked up the story if it had a clear date?
"I suspect yes, but don't know for sure," said Rich Gordon, an associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, who has been blogging on the issue. Gordon noted that timestamps are more valuable to readers than to Google. And the question remains, would others who rushed to spread and trade on the story have noticed the date of 2002? We will never know for sure.
But accurate dates and times on news stories on the Internet, including archived ones, should be a no-brainer for all news organizations.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/google-tribune-play-blame-game/story.aspx?guid=%7bE712A6E5-E920-41B9-8385-722D79CA5BAD%7d&print=true&dist=printMidSection
