Originally Posted by
mozilla
I do not believe this travel agency popped up above UA in the organic search results. It did so in the paid ads results, which appear on top of the organic results.
Google did have the chance to not accept this ad for this specific search query, instead, Google happily pocketed the money and placed the clearly misleading search result on top of the legitimate search results when their user relied on them for accurate information, enabling the scammers in what they do.
I highly doubt this is the first documented case, and I highly doubt Google isn't aware that it is happening.
Certainly not the first documented case (see screenshot above for Facebook). Aside from carefully screening each and every ad that flows through Google's system (which I doubt they do), it would be very difficult for Google to stop a bad ad once it's out there. Their search system is a giant black box and I suspect no one from engineering knows exactly what keywords would trigger a specific ad to appear at a specific time. That being said, Google could do more in this area and should apply more of the technical knowledge to solving this problem rather than creating yet another AI system that wins another useless game like Go or Starcraft!
Safe Travels,
James