Google Tool Misused To Scrub Tech CEO's Shady Past From Search

A San Francisco tech CEO, Maury Blackman, has been attempting to remove unflattering information about himself from Google's search results. This effort escalated when journalist Jack Poulson reported on Blackman's domestic violence arrest. Blackman has a history of using legal means to suppress such reporting. The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) has been monitoring Blackman's attempts to combat this reporting. Recently, an article by FPF about Blackman's actions disappeared from Google search results. An investigation by FPF revealed that a bug in Google's "Refresh Outdated Content" tool was exploited. This tool is meant to update search results by removing outdated or broken links. The bug allowed an unknown actor to de-index valid URLs by slightly altering their capitalization. This caused Google's crawler to mistakenly treat working pages as broken links. Poulson also found that some of his own articles were similarly affected. Blackman now heads an online reputation management company called The Transparency Company.