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Editor: Matt Paines

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Content error sends United Airlines crashing

United Airlines had its wings clipped after an out-of-date bankruptcy warning appeared on Google News, wiping $1 billion off its share value- all because a news site failed to date-stamp its articles.
 
The perpetrator of the SEO blunder was the South Florida Sun Sentinel, which does not date-stamp its news content.
 
United Airlines shares were sent tumbling after a single view in the middle of night on a 2002 story about United Airlines filing for bankruptcy triggered a comedy of errors, culminating in panic on Wall Street.
 
The view of the archive story on the South Florida Sun Sentinel website was at a period of very low traffic and instantly sent the story to its list of most read articles.
 
The Google bot picked up the article and, as there was no date stamp to indicate that it was an old story, posted it to its news index.
 
Bloomberg was then alerted to the story and reported it as breaking news, sparking a selling frenzy by investors, as the United Airlines share price nosedived from $12 to $3.72 before trading was suspended.
 
Red faces at the South Florida Sun Sentinel and Bloomberg are trying to shift blame onto the Google newsbot.
 
But the farce clearly demonstrates the importance of correctly tagging news content to provide Google and the readers with the information they need.

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