I have to cut Google a little slack over mistaking advertorials for real news stories and put a big chunk of the blame on the newspapers themselves which are often far from diligent in making those distinctions obvious.

My local Gannett daily in Rochester, NY printed a canned chiropractor ad (just drop in the name of the local practitioner) whose text read "Our paper has teamed up with Dr. [name redacted] once again to help readers learn about new options for finding pain relief!" It appeared on page 3 in typeface similar to that of the paper’s news stories with a byline.

To the editor’s credit, when I pointed this out, the ad was promptly modified, but then continued to run twice more without a disclaimer noting that it was indeed an advertisement, not news copy. Again, I wrote the editor, and that was corrected. Clearly, the paper’s advertising department is less than scrupulous when it comes to making sure that paid ad copy is not easily confused with the news.

I’m not surprised that it could confuse the AI at Google or Bing.