Google News Yields Spam

Google News Yields Spam

By: Doug Caverly
2006-07-13

Google News, while extremely useful, doesn't seem to have all the kinks worked out just yet; obvious spam still turns up among the search results, sometimes even at the very top of the list. Jeremy Wagstaff found an example of this recently.

The writer, whose article on the subject can be found here, searched for "ringtones." The top story (along with six related stories) offered not news, but advertising. The results marketed "a range of goods that can hardly be lumped together with ringtones, including sildenafil and tenuate," according to Wagstaff. Google has since corrected this particular example of the problem, but screenshots still exist in Wagstaff's article.

Nathan Weinberg offered an explanation for the malfunction. "Apparently, since Google hasn't figured out yet that indexing the message boards of Vibe Magazine is an awful idea (and completely against the purpose of Google News), spammers are hitting that board hard with 'free ringtone' spam," he wrote.

In his blog, Weiberg also pointed out that the issue exists well beyond this one instance. "There are lots of problem sources in Google News . . . . News includes sources like livearticles.org, which has none of the high-quality news articles Google is supposedly looking for."

This isn't to say that Google News isn't a valuable resource. Of the writers in the office at the moment, each and every one admitted to using it frequently. And to be fair, other search engines have also encountered a number of problems with spam. But Google needs to realize its news engine could still use a little tinkering.

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About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for SearchNewz, WebProNews, InternetFinancialNews, and SecurityProNews.