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Google's In The News box which launched over a month ago has been shown to have some weird content found within it but sponsored post and content is something I have not seen reported yet.
Chipper Nicodemus noticed one yesterday and shared a picture of it with me on Twitter. It was for a search in Google for [email marketing] and I was indeed able to replicate this myself.
Here is the screen shot:
As you can see, the story is from VentureBeat‎, posted two days ago and is a "Sponsored Post." Technically, not news, but paid for content.
Google has a way for Google News publishers to communicate if stories are paid or not, but the In The News box can pull in blog posts, social shares, YouTube videos and more. Normal web pages do not have that method and thus Google by mistake pulled in a sponsored post.
This isn't too good for relevancy.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
