Yesterday, I was tipped off by a reader that the number two listing on Google Trends was this form of "ASCII art" ✈ ▌▌. At first, I thought it was an airplane landing on a runway strip. By I was wrong, it seemed to be an attack by a group of users, targeting Google Trends. They wanted to show an airplane flying into the former World Trade Center "Twin Towers." Yes, horrible!
Since posting, we have several comments at Search Engine Land. Danny notes that this potentially stemmed from a post at eBaum's World Forum.
In any event, this is not the first time Google Trends was targeted by hate. We saw a Swastika on Google Trends about six months ago. Then Google told us it was purely algorithmic, based on a spike of searches. This time, likely the same thing. I have a feeling that this is an issue that Google's Search Quality team can fix going forward, but the question is, are the resources there for it.
You can find more coverage of this story at Techmeme.
Forum discussion at Sphinn and DigitalPoint Forums.
