Google and Political Commentary–Who is really fooled?
As blogs have noted (see here and here) that if you type in the word failure (or, as Google’s own sight points out “miserable failure“) you will find the official Bush White House site as the top link found. Cute. Funny. But it brings to light something that is far more insidious.
As Google has now pointed out on their own site, this is a result of “Google bombing.” Here is Google’s explanation:
By using a practice called googlebombing, however, determined pranksters can occasionally produce odd results. In this case, a number of webmasters use the phrases [failure] and [miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush’s website, thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases.
Google then goes on to explain that they don’t manually edit or change the search results, even though it appears it is a result of people Google has labeled as “pranksters.” In fact Google writes: “but we’re also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up. Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don’t affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission.”
So we have pranksters that have fun with this. Rabid liberals get another chance to poke fun at President Bush, continuing their on-going “hit and run” strategies of poking fun at the President without ever having to provide or engage in, any “serious” discussion of the issues. And I am sure that if Google had been as pervasive in the 1990s rabid Conservatives would have had some fun with search words and President Clinton (I will leave those to your imagination!)
But does “google bombing” really not “affect the quality… objectivity… the core of our mission?” In this case, politics is such a “hot button topic” that such bizarre outcomes are immediately questioned and the “truth” comes out. But perhaps there are instances where a persistent attack on other topics could have a more insidious effect. For instance, Ryan Schultz documented an incident where a googlebomb was used to point to anti-semitic sites when the word “jew” was searched.
At another site (Stone Court) a liberal steps up the rhetoric, and advocates google-bombing because it can be used to represent a pro-abortionist point of view. That blogger calls it “bombing for choice. Note for this to work, these “bombers” are using this to influence people who are conducting legitimate searches. This is done to effect outcomes, and not to make a cheap political joke. Other sites actually advocate such attacks, including against Verisign (and another against Verisign), or scientologists controlling their message, and then a more light-hearted one, where a man wants to be the most famous David Gallagher on the net.
How hard would it be to accomplish this? According to one site “Empirical results indicate that it does not take a large number of websites to achieve a Googlebomb. The effect has been achieved with only a handful of dedicated weblogs.”
I haven’t given much attention to “Google Bombing” before. Perhaps it is because I am tired of cheap political shots that seem to serve as a liberal’s way of dealing with important issues. Or perhaps worse, I haven’t given it thought because it is so insidious. Perhaps I never noticed it, even when it was displayed on my screen in search after search, because the successful searchers, like “bombers for choice” are actually working to influence outcomes. And ironically, such influence is usually seen to reduce choice.
So let me join MetaTalk and go on record as condeming google bombing. Oh, heck, let the infantile political stuff continue. Sure, it’s funny. But Google–do something to stop such influence. Google bombing does far more harm to the results than you apparently are willing to accept. Your results are no longer objective.
A failure indeed.
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Just curous as to when you became internet-savvy, as it appears you’re only looking at one of the most recent examples of Google-Bombing, as it relates to a politician whom you support.
In fact, Google Bombing has been around quite a while… even *gasp*…. during Bill Clinton’s time.
In 1999, a search for “more evil than Satan” produced Microsoft’s home page.
A search for “French military victories” produces a page which reads, “no pages found… did you mean French military defeats?”
Ironically, a search for “great President” ALSO produces the website for Dubya. A search for “waffles” brings up the website for John Kerry. Sort of blows a big ol’ hole in that “Partisan Prankster” argument of yours, eh?
Oh, I don’t doubt that “google bombing” has been around for some time. In fact, I don’t doubt that there are far more examples of it than the ones you or I have listed. Mine were more recent examples since I was exploring the breadth of topics that have been “Google bombed” and not as interested in the length of time that it has been occurring.
Given that your examples were partisan, from both sides of the aisle, your examples actually lend credence to my commenting about the playground of the partisan pranksters, rather than, as you wrote “Sort of blows a big ol’ hole in that “Partisan Prankster” argument of yours, eh?”
And actually, the point of the post was to get at the larger issue. Perhaps you see the partisan, and the political. I see Google as a tool to help navigate through a sea of information, and as a search tool, I and many (DARE I say most) others have come to expect it to be objective, and not so easily manipulated.
As I mentioned, I hadn’t noticed it before, and thus had never realized how easily my search for information could be influenced by others.
This post was actually not so much about politics as it was about the objectivity of Google at large.
FP–
Did you get a chance when looking over my blog to view the Google Flash presentation on the other post? I think you might enjoy it.
I think that flash presentation actually brings up some very disturbing questions as we see our society relying more on each others subjective opinions rather than on more objective reporting and authoritative analysis. Wouldn’t you agree?
Well, to be clear, it seems as though you were focused on only “liberal” partisan attacks. I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of the other side of the aisle, as well.
I as I posted over at Cb’s site:
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Yes, to be exact, the words “Partisan Prankster” were never used. To be fair, I used the use of the word “prankster” and took phrases such as “cheap political shots that seem to serve as a liberal’s way of dealing with important issues” and meshed the two together with some alliteration to make for some perhaps more colorful reading.
In his original post, he goes on to state that:
Rabid liberals get another chance to poke fun at President Bush, continuing their on-going “hit and run” strategies of poking fun at the President without ever having to provide or engage in, any “serious” discussion of the issues. while linking, of course, to PTF as an example of such.
Then there’s the point where he states “I am tired of cheap political shots that seem to serve as a liberal’s way of dealing with important issues.” Not to mention his referencing it as “…infantile political stuff….”
Are you trying to say that, in your interpretation of his post (which I only continaully reference because you initially referenced it) that there’s no attempt to label this as a problem of “liberals?”
I was making only two points with my comments: 1) That Google-Bombing existed prior to Dubya; and 2) that the “partisan pranksters” existed on both sides of the aisle. That’s all.
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To be exact, when you put something in quotation marks I assume you are quoting someone. Silly mistake of mine.
To your question,
Yes, I do not think he was saying that this is only a porblem of “liberals.” In fact, he said,
The problem with your comments are that while your first point was well made, and I truly appreciate it, your second point is not because you indulge in your hyperbole.
I suppose my discipline makes me a careful reader and that can be viewed as being pedantic on my part, but seeing this sort of loose use of language irritates me and so I comment on it. And I will comment on it regardless of who is at fault. As I noted, I did not include the partisan comments from my brother’s post because I felt the detracted from the more salient point regarding Google’s (in)action. Clearly I was right to do so because you, and no doubt others, focused upon the political rhetoric and missed his central thesis, one that still holds merit.
For myself, I try to be precise in my writing, especially when I am arguing a point. I do not always succeed and further conversation hopefully can help clarify the point at issue. Blogs and the internet can sometimes be very helpful in that we can see the argument develop, but other times we can obviously end up down a rabbit trail.
And now political uses of Google Earth found here.
As cross-posted at Cb’s site… just for the sake of completion:
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Since you strive to be precise in your writing, let me point out that quotation marks are used not only to quote, but to MARK either terminology, slang, or sarcasm. I can point you to the correct sources on this if you’d like.
Secondly, I don’t know how quoting your brother, and including his thoughts more completely, qualifies as hyperbole. Perhaps I QUOTED hyperbole by pointing out the partisan nature of his post, and you are therefore somewhat confused.
To be clear, I understand the BASIC issue you’re raising, and defending with your brother’s statement, which you cite – Google should do something to fix Googlebombing or suffer the consequences of users doubting the search results… I’ve got it correct, right?
So, if I can conede that point, why is it so difficult for to simply IGNORE the partisan slashes that your brother makes in the same post, and in deleting them, pretend that they simply don’t exist? I guess I expected too much to think that either of you might concede on a point where you may not be totally correct.
I’m not sure that your brother’s single “if/then” statement balances a string of attacks on liberals, which I have already listed. These were not MY writing, but those of your brother. Nevertheless, if that’s your reading on it, then so be it. I’ve laid out my thoughts on that already. I’ll leave those up to the reader to consider.
Just as a final thought, as a precise writer, you might consider spellcheck to clean up any final “porblem” you might have in your comments (yes, the use of quotation marks there are used both for emphasis, as well as to quote directly.) 😉
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My reply can be found at my Targuman.org/blog.