Google Cache Makes Murdoch's K-12 Site Look Obscene

theodp writes "Rupert Murdoch's Amplify Education site is all about the kids, so it's understandable that the site's Terms of Use bans abusive, pornographic, obscene, and vulgar content. But if one uses Google to do a site search of Amplify.com (e.g., site:amplify.com donkey) you may get quite an unexpected eye-opener (redacted, but still NSFW). So, does someone at Amplify really want to "@&^$" your "a**"? Of course not. But this does serve as a cautionary tale of the perils of buying a second-hand domain name when pages of the shuttered site may live on in cache-land. Prior to its conversion to a site for kids' education, Amplify.com was a social sharing product that allowed users to clip favorite sites from the web and add their own commentary. Google does note that removed content may still show up in Google's search results in certain situations (removal requests can be made)." Update: 04/08 17:04 GMT by T : Stephanie Chang writes (in a comment below): "Hi, I’m the editor of Amplify.com. We purchased our domain name in February 2012 and took ownership of the site in July 2012 for use as our company's home page. Prior to that, the domain was used by its previous owners as a social-sharing site. As a result, some old content dating back to the previous domain ownership still shows up as cached on certain search engines. Amplify Education, Inc. did not produce the cached content in question nor do we in any way endorse it. We’re working with Google and other search providers to make sure caches of our site are up to date. In the meantime, we apologize to anyone whose attempts to locate information on amplifying donkeys resulted in a negative browsing experience."

Comments

Obviously the cached content was not current

[gubon13]

Rupert Murdoch doesn't want to f_ck your a_s - he wants to f_ck your access to impartial press.

Re:Obviously the cached content was not current

[Frosty Piss]

What's with the "f_ck" and "a_s"? If you thought the word and probably say the word, why not type the word?

Fuck and Ass. There, no one died.

Re:What's the news here?

[alphatel]

Google's webmaster tools can limit issues like this.

As can wary domain buyers who know to look at a domain's history as part of the valuation.

And Google Street View makes me look bad...

[truedfx]

...if the previous residents of my house liked to decorate the windows with pentagrams? Or do people understand that different people live at the same address at different times?

Re:And Google Street View makes me look bad...

[mounthood]

...if the previous residents of my house liked to decorate the windows with pentagrams? Or do people understand that different people live at the same address at different times?

No, not when it comes to the internet. If hotmail.com was sold and became a p0rn site, it'd be a media apocalypse. Eventually people would understand the difference but they don't today.

What should be done, relative to the popular ignorance on this subject, is simple: the buyers of used domains should be careful to guard their reputations, allowing caches to expire, 404'ing inbound links from old affiliates, etc... A more interesting discussion would be, What technical steps should be taken when buying a used domain?

Re:This is why you robots.txt after a purchase

[Anonymous Coward]

If that actually works, that's really scary. That would mean that the Internet Archive's copy a whole website could be removed entirely just because the domain name changed ownership. There are quite a few scenario's where this is clearly unwanted, the most obvious ones being the operator of the site running out of cash and selling it, or a site a site that contains dirt on e.g. the political process that gets confiscated or pressured into removing the pages.

Fake outrage.

[TapeCutter]

It's like the linking bullshit, we all know that if Murdoch wants to stop Google indexing his propaganda all he need do is fix his robots.txt. Same deal here, the process/facts are irrelevant when you are trying to paint the enemy as an irresponsible pornographer, a brazen thief, a despicable leach, or whatever bad news story he can dream up where Google are trampling all over his delicate sense of entitlement.