Last week we noted that Google’s role in the United airline debacle was not as blame free as the tried to imply.

(To remind you – a newspaper story from 2002 was picked up by Google as 2008, because (allegedly) it wasn’t properly dated and thus (allegedly) Google redated it. The story was about United going into Ch 11 in 2002. A Bloomberg analyst picked it up, put it on the wires as 2008, and United shares plummeted until trading was stopped.)

Anyway, Greywolf SEO has been doggedly tracking down the Googleclaim that it was a one off, and has found other examples.

Google is assigning a date of September 14 2008 for a news story that was published on August 24 2007, and September 4th of 2008 for a story that was published on October 28, 2007.

Big deal you say? Well What if I’m in the financial market and as part of my job I have to monitor HRJ Capital, and I go to Google News and search for them [HRJ Capital] I get that story that was originally published on August 24, 2007 but that Google thinks was published on September 14th 2008. Do you see how assigning the wrong date to old news could cause a problem?

Well, just ask United.

The reason Google is trying to fight is that having to check the accuracy of its millions of pages – which would put huge costs onto its operation. But if its not Google’s problem and fault, whose precisely is it?

Tags: Google