Google crawler blamed for UAL stock dive

United Air Lines (UAL) rode out a bumpy ride on the stock market yesterday when a 6-year-old old news article on the company's bankruptcy filing resurfaced on Google and was reported by an investment letter. According to this report in the LA Times, UAL shares dived to just $3, down from Friday's $12.30, but quickly rebounded once investors realized the report was erroneous. And all that leads to one question: Is news gathering the best place for automation?

UAL says the problem began when the South Florida Sun-Sentinel erroneously posted the 2002 article on its most-viewed page, along with the wrong date of Sept. 6. The story was then picked up by a reporter for the Income Security Advisors newsletter, a Florida investment newsletter, who found the article via a Google search for "bankruptcy 2008." It was then sent over Bloomberg News as a one-line brief, triggering a wave of panic selling.

But Tribune Co., owner of the Sun-Sentinel, blamed Google, saying the search engine highlighted the story, which generated traffic and led to the newspaper site's automated tools moving it up to the most-viewed section. Google countered by saying the only reason the crawler picked up the story was because it was on the most-viewed page and had a current date.

Whatever the chain of events, the bottom line is that an old story highlighted on Google as news caused UAL's stock price to implode. And that's a scary thing. The fact that three supposedly reputable news firms--Google, the Sun-Sentinel, and Security Advisors--were all fooled by some automated tools into highlighting a 6-year-old story should give editors pause. Maybe news gathering isn't the best use for automation after all.

• automation
• crawler
• Google
• Income Security Advisors
• South Florida Sun-Sentinal
• stock market
• stock price
• Tribune Co.
• UAL