Apostrophe S

I recently visited the Podcast aisle of the iTunes Music Store to see if there were any good World Cup programs. My first instinct, of course, was to search for “World Cup.” I found what I was looking for, but curiously, a “Cars” podcast came up with almost 100 percent relevancy. Seems a little weird, doesn’t it? So I did a few more searches, with varying results. “Cars” appeared a few times, often when search terms seemed to have little relation to it.

Is Apple — who has close ties with Pixar — padding their search results to generate interest in “Cars”? Granted, Apple doesn’t make any money by distributing podcasts. Indeed, they probably lose money if you include additional iPod sales in the equation. But it still seems a bit fishy…