Recently, the photo site launched new auto-tagging features that intelligently label photos based on their contents. This is also what makes what happened to Google Maps different from Flickr's similar algorithmic issues. In the case of the White House and other offensive Maps searches, the algorithm wasn't subject to a coordinated effort, it just gathered up all the data the internet could provide, and the internet provided trash. A group of people decided they wanted to game the 'santorum' results and made it happen. And it's important to understand that while the technical function of producing the recent racist results are similar to how a Googlebomb works, there's one very big fundamental difference: A Googlebomb is calculated.
In practice, though, it also means that if enough people online refer to a specific place using vile epithets, even one of the most recognizable landmarks in the United States can be reduced to racist garbage. In theory, this helps customers find shops and services near them that might otherwise be labeled too vaguely to be helpful. As search guru Danny Sullivan points out at SearchEngineLand, a recent Google update applied similar ranking logic to Maps as of late last year, incorporating mentions of locations across the Web to help more accurately surface them in searches, and to provide richer descriptions when they appear. What happened with Google Maps appears to have the same technical foundation as those concerted campaigns.
