JohnQPublic
22nd December 2016, 07:42 AM
Google is profiting from Holocaust denial, says Jewish museum (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/22/google-profiting-holocaust-denial-jewish-breman-museum)A Jewish heritage museum has accused Google of profiting from Holocaust denial because it is paying to prevent a neo-Nazi website from appearing as the top result for “did the Holocaust happen”.
The marketing director of the Breman Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, said it was “nauseating” that Google directed users to the white supremacist site, and added that it was paying Google up to $2 a click to direct searchers to its own site via AdWords, Google’s pay-per-click advertising service...
...A Google spokesman said last week: “We never want to make money from searches for Holocaust denial and we don’t allow regular advertising on those terms.”
...On Tuesday, however, Google told a search industry website it had decided to make a major algorithmic change to combat the problem.
In a story, headlined Official: Google makes change, results are no longer in denial over ‘Did the Holocaust happen?’ a Google spokesman said the company had recently made “improvements to our algorithm that will help surface more high quality, credible content on the web”.
But Barry Schwartz, the founder of Search Engine Roundtable, a long-standing industry site, said: “There is no evidence of any change to the algorithm. We track these things very carefully and there’s nothing to suggest they have done anything.”
The marketing director of the Breman Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, said it was “nauseating” that Google directed users to the white supremacist site, and added that it was paying Google up to $2 a click to direct searchers to its own site via AdWords, Google’s pay-per-click advertising service...
...A Google spokesman said last week: “We never want to make money from searches for Holocaust denial and we don’t allow regular advertising on those terms.”
...On Tuesday, however, Google told a search industry website it had decided to make a major algorithmic change to combat the problem.
In a story, headlined Official: Google makes change, results are no longer in denial over ‘Did the Holocaust happen?’ a Google spokesman said the company had recently made “improvements to our algorithm that will help surface more high quality, credible content on the web”.
But Barry Schwartz, the founder of Search Engine Roundtable, a long-standing industry site, said: “There is no evidence of any change to the algorithm. We track these things very carefully and there’s nothing to suggest they have done anything.”