Sure would be nice if the material was provided to us too. Or write an article explaining clearly how the original info was misconstrued. Simply deleting it (edit: instead of replacing it with a clarification so anyone who goes to read the wrong info gets the corrected one) really sends a wrong message, both about Wired and Google.

https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1709726778170786297 (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37802302)

Uh, other than being pushed off the visible page, I guess?

Again, your point is one I strongly agree with, but it's also taken out-of-context with respect to the article Google was responding to.

Maybe the score is simply highly-correlated with a site that shows many google ads? Think about it, someone that shows Google ads happens to also be very very keen on optimizing everything that affects their rankings in Google searches.

Hey Google, perhaps "displaying many Google ads" should be a negative on page-rank?

Or

"Your search rankings are high. Sure'd be ashamed of you got deindexed."

(Google's likely response as 'relevant material')

And right now, I'm in my states capitol, looking for a restaurant... Using Google maps. And when I searched for restaurants, was given an advertised 'optimized' curated set of restaurants. And within walking distance, they're missing easily half of the restaurants.

Now, which half are they missing? The small one-off places just aren't here on a search. HOWEVER, if you zoom in all the way, then those less-indexed restaurants FINALLY show up.

I'm sitting in 1 of those deindexed eateries right now. So yeah, the article's true and has been for a while now.

I wish WIRED had included this context in their retraction statement…

We don’t know, but it does seem like a reasonable suspicion?

Little DDG would necessarily have to do with it either.

Okay, but where is its correction? If you, as a professional publication that considers itself to publish news, unintentionally spread misinformation, you shouldn't just take down the old links, you should put out a new piece with the correct information (and give it just as much attention, don't hide it away).

The news came out, everybody got mad, and not half the people who read the original article (or headline) will revisit the articles and see the retraction.

Maybe the correction will come later, but I'll stay sceptical of anything Wired has to say until the correction comes out.