I’m taking a small digression today. This post isn’t about a Google search trend, but instead, a fascinatingly weird result I’m seeing in Google News. Here are the Google News listings that showed up at the top of my Google results for the word “obama” this evening:
Google News result for "obama"
Take a look at that third listing. The headline reads “Obama feeds America a junk food diet with Biden choice.” OK, I’m thinking, that’s a strange headline for the Seattle Post Intelligencer, let’s go look at the article. Lo and behold, the actual article title is this:
McCain feeds America a junk food diet with Palin choice
Wow! How did that headline morph into “Obama feeds America a junk food diet with Biden Choice?” Is it “opposite day” on Google News?
The answer… as far as I can tell, the Obama-Biden phrase was included in the visitor-submitted comments on this article, where a fella named peterclarke uses the phrase.
Can you believe that a phrase in the comments made its way onto Google news as the headline? Then, just to add to the insanity, you can see other sites (known as scrapers, these are content thieves on the internet) repeating the Google News content:
If I was involved in these political campaigns, I’d have volunteers jumping on the chance to hijack Google News headlines by writing our own preferred talking points in the comments. Here are a few possibilities:
- “McCain Gaffes Could Undercut Message on Economy, Foreign Affairs” could be altered to read:”Edwards Affair Could Undercut Message on Foreign Underwear”
- Michelle Obama: A rising star, she aims to stay grounded could be re-titled: “Michelle Obama: Red Star Yeast Works Great to Make Flour Rise”
- Obama, Biden wives rally at UVa could be “Starved for attention, Biden knifes self in uvula”
Well, I’m off to comment 
As always,
The Google Pollster
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