Google covers President O's flank

American Thinker ^ | January 28, 2009 | Thomas Lifson

[neverdem]

Google has changed the rules on its serach engine to protect President Obama from the same sort of mockery it allowed of President Bush.

For better or worse, Google's search engine has become the principal index for online information, giving the company tremendous opportunities to inflict bias on the nation's (and world's) information flow. Sadly, the company is demonstrating a willingness to slant leftward.

During the Bush Administration, Google did nothing to prevent manipulation of its search algorithms so that one typed in "miserable failure", articles about President Bush appeared. But now that The One is president, the company has stepped in to prevent this manipulation,

Steve Gilbert at Sweetness and Light has the story. Google, of course, spins it differently:

Though the spirit of change may be in the air in Washington, some things apparently stay the same. Yes, the old online prank called "Googlebombing" returned for a brief while recently, when Google searches for the words words [failure] and [cheerful achievement] returned President Obama's biography as the top result.

You may remember this issue from a few years ago, when the query [miserable failure] led to the biography of President Bush. For some reason, all those links pointing to the Bush bio were redirected to Obama's. Some people have asked in the past whether these results are a sign of political bias on Google's part, and we've explained that this isn't the case.

Rather than edit these prank results by hand, we developed an algorithm a few years ago to detect Googlebombs. We tend not to run it all the time, because it takes some computing power to process our entire web index and because true Googlebombs are quite rare (we joke around the Googleplex that more articles have been written about Googlebombs than there are actual examples of Googlebombs).

After we became aware of this latest Googlebomb, we re-ran our algorithm and it detected the Googlebomb for [cheerful achievement] as well as for [failure]. As a result, those search queries now return discussion about the Googlebombs rather than the original pages that were returned.

Be sure check out search engine analyst Danny Sullivan's post from yesterday. He does a great job explaining the history behind this and how it all works.

This sort of naked bias cannot be explained away. The simple facts are exactly as S&L puts it:

Please note that it took a mere six and a half long years - and a couple of days after Mr. Obama was inaugurated - for Google to decide to "re-run" their "algorithm."

Posted at 09:38 AM | Email | Permalink | |  |   yahooBuzzArticleHeadline = "Google covers President O's flank"; yahooBuzzArticleSummary = "Google has changed the rules on its serach engine to protect President Obama from the same sort of mockery it allowed of President Bush.For better or worse, Google's search engine has beco..."; yahooBuzzArticleCategory = "politics"; yahooBuzzArticleType = "text"; yahooBuzzArticleId = window.location.href; http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/google_covers_president_os_fla.html

[americanophile]

Disgusting.

[a fool in paradise]

Fearless Leader will not be mocked.

[Travis T. OJustice]

An alternative to commie Google:

http://www.alltheweb.com/

[goodnesswins]

Another alternative to Google.....SCROOGLE -

http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm

[muawiyah]

Still they all work for the Chi-coms.

[messierhunter]

We tend not to run it all the time, because it takes some computing power to process our entire web index and because true Googlebombs are quite rare

It's truly insulting they think conservatives are stupid enough to believe this excuse. It really shows how little they think of you and me.

[river rat]

The Dalai Bama has skin as thin as his resume, experience and worthiness....

The skinny, big eared sock puppet's myth is already falling apart -- forcing the builders of his Potemkin Village to ride to the rescue...

Google should be ashamed of themselves....

[the_Watchman]

That’s not the only sign of Google bias. During the hoopla about Blagovich there was a question of whether Obama and his people had contacted Blago during the Senatorial vetting process. Obama claimed there had been no contact. However, Rush, getting pointers from the blogosphere, talked about an article at Connect Tristates that announced a meeting between Bloga and Obama which was supposed to take place later in the day. That article was pulled from the website within an hour of Rush’s airing. The google cache also replaced the article with the erased entry.

http://www.connecttristates.com/news/story.aspx?id=219212

It turned out that there was a second article from the same news outfit which had been posted later in the week. It referred to the meeting that had already taken place between Obama and Blago. This article was also deleted from the news site. However, the google cache entry was not erased. I managed to print a copy from google cache.

[smokingfrog]

obama truth usurper

[The Truth Will Make You Free]

Thanks. I’ll try it. Tried Microsoft’s Live Search, but didn’t like it, and the term “Live Search” is likewise confusing.

[Ed Condon]

Well at least this site puts Obama on top , if you use the search term “miserable failure”.

[D-fendr]

Looks like Google has elevated the page rank for Obama’s White House Blog as well.

google “blog”
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=blog&btnG=Search

It’s also the first blog returned if you google the letter “a”.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Ok. So let's make a new Googlebomb.

Let’s get everyone to link to "http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/president_obama/" with the words “Socialist Mole” to make Obama the top Google pick.

It’s fun, it’s easy. Just placing <a href=”http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html”>Socialist Mole</a> in your favorite web page will look like Socialist Mole.

At least, that's how I think it's done. Though I don't know if the new "algorithm" will detect and stop new attempts. I don't think it will since the Google spin about this whole process sounds like BS.

[DevNet]

They get their search results from yahoo - which is even more in bed with China than Google is.

[Travis T. OJustice]

Damn. WHat was that other one? Dogpile?

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

[FreeAtlanta]

I think adding the alt tag improves the efficiency;

<a alt="socialist mole" href=”http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html”>Socialist Mole</a>

[Freeper]

Try www.dogpile.com

[McGavin999]

They can re-direct all they want, but the simple truth is they can’t stop people from laughing at Obama and now laughing at Google too.