Searching for The New York Times

[Edward Wigg]

There's an article from Wired about the New York Times and its 
relationship to search engines and the web:
<http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64110,00.html>


"How can the mighty New York Times, which considers itself America's 
paper of record, be the paper of record in cyberspace when its articles 
barely show up on Google?....

But recently, when I googled the terms "Iraq torture prison Abu Ghraib" 
-- certainly one of the most intensively covered news stories of the 
year -- the first New York Times article was the 295th search 
result.....

Two years ago, Martin Nisenholtz, chief executive of New York Times 
Digital, bet $1,000 that nytimes.com would outrank all blogs on Google 
by 2007, based on a search of five keywords on a topical news issue. 
Unless Google and the Times work on their relationship -- Nisenholtz 
says they're talking, although they haven't come up with any answers 
yet -- there may be a day when The New York Times doesn't show up at 
all on the Net's most popular search engine. Ultimately, this could be 
a direct threat to the Times' legacy."

No great insights, but I thought it worth reading nonetheless given 
that our patrons sometimes seem to think that if something can't be 
found on the first page of a Google search then it must not exist.

Edward