Google News is the life blood for many people who try to stay on top of news. It is also fairly hard to be included in the Google News index. So when Google News gets infected with spam, people take notice.
We have a WebmasterWorld thread with complaints and ShoeMoney posted specific details with the Google News spam.
Here is the reaction from the person who posted at WebmasterWorld:
Recently I noticed spammy news in a lot of google results. In fact, a google news article now takes the #1 position for a VERY popular search term..when you click it, the page redirects to an affiliates landing page. I thought this was just a quirk until I noticed spammy news in more search results and then I read a blog where they are also complaining about the recent surplus in spammy google news results.Boy this is just getting bad. Whatever kind of update this is seems to be doing more harm than good. For all the work that google has done to prevent spam in their index, this is a real shame. I really hope google knows what its doing as I am just about fed up because I clicked on one of those google news results and it redirected me to somewhere and I now have a virus on my computer that hijacks all my search results. It forwards all my search results to affiliate programs. Thanks google.
If the spam sticks, rest assured people will stop using Google News.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
