According to Cnet.com, Google along with credit card processors Mastercard, Amex, Discover and Paypal  are going after sites like MugShots.com (Cnet actually put that one on top of their article which appears above)

Sites like Mugshots.com, take public Mug Shot photos from law enforcement and put them up on the site where they get indexed by Google under the person’s name and then offers those people arrested through other sites that are promoted on the Mug Shot site, services that will take the Mug Shots down for a fee in the $400 range.

According to Cnet, The New York Times last week openly asked  why Google was rewarding Mugshot type of sites  with favorable search result rankings, especially since the search giant’s rules favor original content over images and text taken from a third party.

Google told the times that they have been “working for the past few months on an improvement to our algorithms to address this overall issue in a consistent way,” and hope to have it out in the coming weeks.”

 

Cnet.com goes on to say officials at MasterCard told the Times that they found the activity “repugnant” and had urged the merchant bank that handles those accounts to end those relationships.

PayPal had a similar response, as did American Express and Discover.