Rich Gordon

United Air: False Google Story Triggers Massive Sell-Off

The remaining mystery is, what caused the traffic on Saturday night/Sunday morning that elevated this 6-year-old story to the most-viewed list on the Sun-Sentinel Web site.

I think I have the answer: The time frame when this occurred would be the lowest-traffic period of the week, so even a small amount of usage (one click?) could lift the story to the fifth-most viewed position among business news articles on the Sun-Sentinel's site.

I reconstruct the timeline here, with some thoughts about what the real lessons of this story are:

www.readership.org/blo...

Rich Gordon
Medill School, Northwestern University