Is Google Blocking FreeRepublic.com?

Poe.com ^ | February 22, 2009 | Richard Lawrence Poe

[r9etb]

Not even close.

Here is a search on Richard Poe Freerepublic.

Any FReeper who cares to, can do a Google search on their screen name. And certain images on the Google image search are most prevalently referenced to FR.

[muawiyah]

Maybe we should ABOLISH the categories. They dont' seem to serve any rational purpose other than making it possible for one set of snobs to piss on another set of snob's shibboliths.

We certainly don't want that sort of thing going on.

[Richard Poe]

KarinG1: If you would please continue to indulge me, and I appreciate your patience, how exactly would they know where I came to your site from? I don’t allow their scripts to run on my computer and I don’t allow referrer logging, so it seems to me that they would have difficulty tracking connections from my network. If they are doing so I’d really like to know how they do it so that I can put a stop to it.

Actually, I don't know how they do it. I lack the expertise to answer your question. It is entirely possible that Google may be unable track you, for all the reasons you state.

However, the fact remains that WordPress Stats showed anywhere from 326 to 413 Freepers viewing the BadEagle site on January 31, so obviously some Freepers can be tracked. The technological hurdles are evidently not so difficult to clear.

My question is, if WordPress Stats can do it, why can't Google? Is it because WordPress Stats has superior technology? Or is it because Google prefers not to track FreeRepublic-generated traffic?

If it is the latter, I humbly suggest that it might be in all of our interests to show a little more intellectual curiosity about this phenomenon, and try to understand what Google might have to gain by systematically underestimating the amount of FreeRepublic-generated traffic some Web sites are receiving.

I suggested a possible answer to this question at the end of my article. If my suspicion is correct, it would mean that Google is rigging the system. It would mean that Google is generating fraudulently misleading data, inflating the traffic statistics of Web sites it likes while deflating the statistics of sites that it dislikes.

The possibility that this may be happening should be a matter of concern for Freepers, in my humble opinion.

[willyd]

You have your google analytics set up for your site, but you do not have the tracking cookie code on the page that was linked from Free Republic. Therefore, Google Analytics did not track it.

Cheers...

[Richard Poe]

justin99: Somehow I doubt a company the size of Google is worried about a website getting 400 hits per day when small websites get tens of thousands...

As I stated in my article, if Google systematically underestimates the level of outgoing traffic from FreeRepublic, then it decreases the influence of FreeRepublic on the Internet -- that is, the ability of FreeRepublic to help likeminded Web sites by linking to them.

If indeed Google is systematically underestimating the level of FreeRepublic's outgoing traffic, it is doing so in order to hurt and diminish FreeRepublic. To put it another way, FreeRepublic would be the intended target of such an operation.

Whatever harm might come to starving little Web sites such as BadEagle.com would be purely incidental.

[Richard Poe]

r9etb: Any FReeper who cares to, can do a Google search on their screen name. And certain images on the Google image search are most prevalently referenced to FR.

I'm afraid your point escaped me. It's not clear to me how this relates to my article. Pardon my slowness. Could you please rephrase?

[TheBattman]

Even more concerning - when a particular forum or blog is associated by Google and other engines with racism, White Supremacy, hate, race, and other “hate words”, filtering services such as BeSafeOnline, 8e6, and others used by individuals and schools associate those URLs with filtered/blocked content. Thus further quieting the conservative voice and keeping out of the reach of the younger generation.

[goodnesswins]

Hmmmmmm....Interesting....may have to send them a message....

[goodnesswins]

Ah...I just remembered....doesn’t Scroogle.org just use Google for its searching? Without all the extraneous stuff? Which could explain the negative hits....which actually are on Google. FWIW

[Richard Poe]

willyd writes: You have your google analytics set up for your site, but you do not have the tracking cookie code on the page that was linked from Free Republic. Therefore, Google Analytics did not track it.

Well, that is interesting, but I still don't understand why WordPress Stats was able to track the traffic, while Google failed. Why the discrepancy? Please explain.

[r9etb]

I'm afraid your point escaped me. It's not clear to me how this relates to my article. Pardon my slowness. Could you please rephrase?

One can hardly accuse Google of "blocking" FR, given how very easy it is to use Google to accesses FR posts.

[Richard Poe]

r9etb writes: One can hardly accuse Google of "blocking" FR, given how very easy it is to use Google to accesses FR posts.

With all due respect, I think you missed the point of my article. I did not write that Google was blocking access to FreeRepublic posts from the Google search engine. Rather, I suggested that Google Analytics might be systematically underestimating the level of outgoing traffic emanating from FreeRepublic to other Web sites.

[dayglored]

> Our experience with the mysterious, vanishing traffic spike of January 31 may indicate that liberal Internet gatekeepers have found a way to curtail FreeRepublic's influence -- and the influence of conservative Web sites generally.

Geez, what a pile of foolishness. I sure wish, before folks posted internet-based conspiracy threads, that they would learn a little about how the internet works.

1. It's not a regulated, consistent service like your 120VAC wall outlet power. It has fluctuations, sometimes big ones. Sometimes there are breakdowns, delays, hangs, confusion.

2. DNS (domain name resolution) can have huge effects on availability of any given website or range, and DNS fluctuates also. Sometimes wildly. A DNS failure in one place can appear to take a website in another place off the internet for hours or even days until it straightens out.

3. The internet was designed to route around temporary outages or severe damage. Sometimes it takes it a little while to do so; sometimes it can't. Sometimes the re-routing is less than optimal.

4. Sometimes it's your own browser, your own computer, your own ISP, or your ISP's connection to a backbone. It's not always the black freakin' helicopters.

5. Network diagnostics and bencmarks often mislead or lie outright. Things change, morph, recover, break again.

6. The answer is more dependent on how you ask the question than on the actual situation. And the situation varies, sometimes wildly.

7. Internet "gatekeepers", liberal or otherwise, are your imagination working overtime. Maybe in their dreams, yeah; but the reality is that only local gatekeeping (like your ISP limiting your pipe) is likely to function as expected.

8. The only practical way to block a site is to filter its packets out of the data stream. Doing so at the level of the general internet is impossible, because as noted above, the internet was designed to route around damage. It views blocking (and similar censorship) as "damage" and routes around it. Only if there is no other pathway, does it fail to automatically "fix" the problem.

You get the idea?

Sheesh. Calm down.

[dayglored]

I should perhaps add:

If your concern is that "liberal gatekeepers" are somehow "limiting the influence" of FreeRepublic by manipulating survey results, well... who cares?

The only thing that really counts is access, which is what I addressed above.

I, and most other like-minded conservatives and libertarians, don't pay attention to internet surveys. Surveys are untrustworthy even at their best.

We hit the websites we want to hit, which only requires internet access. If -that- gets blocked, we have a complaint.

[Richard Poe]

dayglored writes: Sometimes it's your own browser, your own computer, your own ISP, or your ISP's connection to a backbone. It's not always the black freakin' helicopters.

I'm afraid that your comments do not speak to the point.

Let me repeat that WordPress Stats showed between 326 to 413 Freepers visiting BadEagle.com on January 31, while Google Analytics showed none.

Please explain to me how and why this might have occurred. And please be specific. Give me an actual theory which can be put to the test -- that is, a concrete, technical scenario which might conceivably have yielded this result.

I will then consider your theory, and let you know whether or not it fits the circumstances of this particular case. If it does not fit the circumstances of this particular case, I will then invite you to propose an alternate theory.

This sort of discussion would be far more productive, I think, than breezy dismissals of "black helicopters", "conspiracy theories" and the like.

[Richard Poe]

dayglored: If your concern is that "liberal gatekeepers" are somehow "limiting the influence" of FreeRepublic by manipulating survey results, well... who cares?

The fact that you don't personally care whether or not Google might be waging infowar on FreeRepublic is potentially interesting, I suppose, from an ideological, psychological and perhaps even moral standpoint.

However, your expressions of personal apathy should not be confused with actual discussion of the technical anomaly noted in my article above, to wit, the discrepancy between the traffic reports of WordPress Stats and Google Analytics on January 31, 2009.

Please let's stay on topic.

[deport]

Curious........ How does this system work whereby an article posted on FR with a link back to your site creates a hit countable by Google analytics? Are you saying Google Analytics is monitoring every visit to your site?

If so and the following on Google Analytics is supposed to be the trigger then I think you have an issue with Google Analytics: “Paste the Google Analytics tracking code into each of your website pages and tracking begins immediately.”

Playing to the ‘what’s Google doing’ theory on FR won’t get your issue resolved or answered. You need to be discussing this issue with Google using your contract with them and looking for resolution or your money back. FR isn’t the source of your problem. JMO

[Richard Poe]

Justin99: Nothing like a concocting a “liberal conspiracy” to able allow oneself to repeatedly use FR to advertise their website...

Supppose it were true that I posted this article as an advertising stunt. It is not true, but suppose it were. What would be the best reaction to such a stunt?

The obvious solution would be to ignore it. Just let the discussion die. Most threads on FreeRepublic dwindle away after a few minutes anyway. Why not let this one die like the others?

For some reason, that is not enough for you. You and a number of other commentators on this thread seem to feel a strong compulsion to make absolutely sure that anything posted here which might tend to cast doubt on the integrity of Google's page ranking system must be debunked and discredited, for the record.

Why is that? What's in it for you? Why have you folks appointed yourselves as guardians of Google's honor? And, having set yourselves up as defenders of Google, why are you unable to carry out your mission in a civil and gentlemanly fashion, using reasoned arguments and hard evidence?

Instead you resort to condescension, obscurantism, misdirection, mind-numbing repetition of irrelevancies and, now, attacks upon my character and motivation.

These are the tactics of propagandists and disinformers. Why are we seeing such tactics on this thread?

[Richard Poe]

deport: Playing to the ‘what’s Google doing’ theory on FR won’t get your issue resolved or answered.

Actually, what I was hoping to accomplish by posting this article on FreeRepublic was to solicit the opinions of intelligent people with greater knowledge of the Internet than I have, who might be able to shed light on this issue and help me understand whether or not the discrepancy I discovered in Google Analytics' traffic report of January 31, 2009 is innocent or malicious.

Either way, the information I reported has potential repercussions for FreeRepublic, and logically should have been of interest to Freepers.

Sadly, my post failed to generate intelligent discussion. Instead, it generated strong and determined opposition of a most curious kind. This has been a learning experience, to be sure, but the lessons I learned here are not the sort I expected.