Google-Gate

WendyMcElroy.com ^ | December 5, 2009

[Still Thinking]

If you've used Google, you've probably noticed the "autosuggest" feature. Type a few letters, and a drop-down box appears of phrases which might complete your search term. For example, if you type "tekt" you'll get several suggestions, including "tektronix" and "tektronix oscilloscope."

Now try typing "climategat" (without the final "e"). All you get is "climate guatemala" (4,180,000 results) and "climate guatemala city" (1,120,000 results), even though g-a-t doesn't spell "guatemala." And yet if you search for "climategate" in full, you'll see over 20 million results (as of this writing). I've found no subset of "climategate" which actually causes Google to suggest "climategate". (One suggestion for "clim" was "climatemaster" with only 99,100 results.) Even typing "climategate" in full leads only to those "guatemala" suggestions.

Several people have reported this peculiar occurrence; Talking About the Weather decided to investigate (and dubbed it "Google-gate"). His query got a response from a lower-level flunky who claimed the term had not been removed from the suggestions -- though Google does admit to that capability; they remove pornographic suggestions. Instead the flunky suggested "The suggestions change dynamically over time through automated processes based on relevance algorithms." As if climategate suddenly wasn't relevant, or hasn't gone from zero to 20 million hits in the space of only two weeks.

I'm hard-pressed to think of an algorithm which would suppress this automatically, unless Google's brain trust has been working on a don't-embarass-the-bigwigs-of-Google algorithm. It seems that one of Google's senior advisors is...Al Gore.

[Still Thinking]

About what you'd expect from those tolerant dipwads.

[ronnyquest]

This is a surprise? Google colludes with a number of agencies to track users’ searches and, according to some sources, even provides access to members’ e-mails and files stored on Google hardware.

[org.whodat]

What a surprise, now look up in a dictionary and tell me what page “climategate”, appears on!! Your metal hat might be just a bit tight!

[Nahanni]

And this surprises anyone how exactly?

It is one of the reasons I have never used Google as a stand alone search engine.

That and the fact that it is like wading through a football stadium full of crap to find the pony you are looking for.

Dogpile.com for the win!

[LiberConservative]

A month ago “climategate” wasn't even a word. Last week it was getting 12M hits. Today it's over 30M.

Climategate: Biggest. Scandal. Ever.

BTW, moderator, FR spell check thinks "climategate" is misspelled. ;)

[HighWheeler]

I just tried “climate gat” (with a space) and got “climate gates” as one of the only two options available. It had nothing to do with Al Gore’s baby.

[HighWheeler]

If you want the Moderator’s attention, put “Admin Moderator” in the “To:” box on your next post.

[I am Richard Brandon]

"Google-Gate"

It's interesting. Yesterday, after reading a similar post, I got "climate gate" as the top suggestion after reaching the a in climate. Today, just like you said, it would not come up at all. I know it varies and they tailor it to searches that you have made from your computer.

Big Google is watching you!

[Roscoe Karns]

I just tried this on Bing. I only had to type in the letters “cl” before it gave me the auto-suggestion “climate-gate”. (3rd on the list)

[HighWheeler]

I just loaded “google-gat” and the dropdown listing included “Google gate”!

Proof of the conspiracy ;o)

[HighWheeler]

thanks for the tip to use Bing. I’ve switched.

[WVKayaker]

I don't use Bing. I try to stay away from MSFT. I did try the "climategate" on Google, and did not get suggestions of anything close, even after completing the word. Yet, it yielded about 30,200,000 hits for "climategate".

Dogpile works, as does my Safari browser.

[org.whodat]

Site listed as blog source:

A site for individualist feminism and individualist anarchism

[ASOC]

My thoughts as well

SO I tried

Climate scand - no scandle at Google

Ditto for
AGW scand
AGW Bulls
AGW profiteerin
AGW fak
climate li

and so on.

Seems a bit odd - I wonder how much work the code monkeys had to put in on that sting???

[WVKayaker]

A site for individualist feminism and individualist anarchism

Hey, I like feminine anarchists...

[Still Thinking]

Yeah, I know, I wasn’t thrilled, but I thought the article stood on it’s own.

[America2012]

There's almost 35 Million hits on AltaVista;

Climategate search on Altavista

[pallis]

Global warmers are the new flat-earthers, and Google is as flat-earther as they get. Though all the real science challenges climate change nonsense, the new flat-earthers remain faithful to their socialist agenda.

[Parawan]

I just tried it using Clikmatgat (one word) and the drop down suggestions were Climategate media, Climatgate CBS and a few additional items.

Whats the problem?