September 12 at 2:16 pm
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In its latest explanation, Tribune said a single visit during a low-traffic period early Sunday morning pushed the undated story onto the list of most popular business news of its South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper's Web site. About 30 minutes after that visit, a user viewing a story about airline-cancellation policies during a storm-ravaged weekend clicked on the link for the old story. Seconds later, Google's automated search agent, Googlebot, visited the Web site and found the story. Soon after that, the story became available through Google News, and by Monday the article became more widely distributed to users of Bloomberg LP, the financial-news service widely watched on Wall Street. Tribune said it previously had identified problems with Google's automated search service and had asked Google to stop trolling Tribune Web sites for inclusion in Google News. - alex de carvalho