Martin Belam (who is infinitely brighter and better qualified than me) thinks that it is a failure of
search engines that search results for
Mumbai and
India don't have stories about the
terrorist attacks at the top. I don't agree.
The terrorist attacks
may be the most significant thing about Mumbai or even India, today. But search results are about more than that, signified by Google's weighting to older content. The terrorist attacks will be dealt with and the city needs to recover. What it doesn't need is a prospective American tourist deciding not to visit in three months time (assuming it doesn't run contrary to state department advice) because of a legacy story on a search engine.
There are issues about news and search, demonstrated by the coverage around
Bob Woolmer's death (as opposed to the reports of his murder). Google News is a step in the right direction although that's not without its
problems. But if the main Google search results worked in the way Martin suggests, it could be more bad news for Mumbai.
