Note: title suffix – “autosuggest still blocked” has been removed, see update2 at bottom of story.
We’ve had the term “global warming” in the lexicon since well before the Internet became a household tool, certainly well before Google itself.
So it is with amazement that I report the rise of a new term, “Climategate” in just a little over 1 week in the Google search engine.
Here’s our old friend “global warming”:
And here is the new term that is spreading like lightning, “climategate”:
global warming – 10,100,000
climategate – 10,400,000
Note that these are web searches, not news searches, but Google suggests a few news stories first. These two searches were conducted about 1 minute apart.
Individual results and search permutations may vary, but it sure seems like “climategate” has grown virally in since the story on the CRU files broke on November 19th.
Here are some other interesting tidbits about “climategate”.
Google seems to be blocking their search box suggestions from using the word, reports on WUWT and my own observation two days ago indicate it was once there. I used by upper right Google Search Box in IE8 to find out.
For example “global war….” has lots of suggestions:
And so does “climate”:
I find it interesting that climate depot and climate audit are suggested ahead of climate progress.
But even when you spell out almost the enirety of “climategate” Google doesn’t seem to think it’s worth suggesting to you:
With “climategate” now as big as, likely even bigger than “global warming” on the web, Google might want to rethink this.
UPDATE: From comments I see that “Bing”, the new search engine from Microsoft, has no such problems, and in fact puts “climategate” right at the top after only 3 letters “c l i”:
I thought the Langjokull Glacier in Iceland was a nice touch. Bing apparently rotates backgrounds, so who knows what you’ll see.
UPDATE2: About 3 hours after this story was first posted, it appears that Google has added the word “climategate” to autosuggest.
Seems no one can resist fiddling with things to make them more like they think they SHOULD be 🙂
JimB
For a moment I assumed it might be that they don’t index made up words (unlikely I know,) so I went to try a few other -gate scandals. Watergate obviously shows up. but so does monicagate, with just 31,000 pages.
Google likes to hide behind the idea that their algorithms are entirely automatic and that there’s no human intervention in the index, but there is. There’s been a conscious choice on the part of Google to index this particular neologism even though other memes will pop up and become part of the helper often within hours of their sudden rise to popularity.
Perhaps Google are in on it! Can we trust ANYONE? Will there be knocks on dissenter’s doors in the middle of the night? Are we safe in our beds? So many questions, so little time, so much to do, what with Copenhagen looming.
REPLY: I’m assuming this is sarcasm – A
It also surpasses “Angelina Jolie” or “Cristiano Ronaldo” 😉
That’s odd.
Googled ‘climategate’ about 10 hours ago and got over 11 million. Now down to 10.6.
Hmm.
Yet another reason to use Bing.
Typing “clim” gets you “Climategate” as the top suggestion.
Latest from Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6678469/University-of-East-Anglia-U-turn-in-climate-change-row.html
But note they say it may take ‘several months’ to get the necessary permissions, which will no doubt grow to years.
La-la-la-la-la…can’t hear you…don’t you know Copenhagen is coming up and we need to press our elected officials to commit to real action…even if if the science is bunk, we are causing our planet to die and must do something about it! This supposed “Climategate” story only detracts from our goals!
– at least what I suspect is happening at Google, Youtube, Wikipidia, CBS, etc, etc, etc.
On 11/25/2009 I commented:
See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/#comments
” Phillip Bratby (11:43:44) :
In less than 8 hours, google hits on “Climategate” have gone from 160,000 to 24,200,000. Hockey stick anyone? Isn’t 24,200,000 about the same as WUWT hits? Coincidence or WATT?”
Funny how google goes up and down.
This, more than anything, frightens me about what kind of servile future some people are trying to bring about.
248,000 for Professor Michael Mann , several hits in the top 10 associate him w/Climate Gate. Such fun.
Bing for “climategate” gives 50,900,000 hits; “global warming” gives 15,300,000 .
Churnalism, a close cousin of Climategate, gets only 108,000
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=churnalism
For reasons of additional disclosure I note that a search on Google for “Globalwarming” (all one word) produces12,300,000 results. However, the point of this blog entry is still with merit and significance. Google has historically made pro-AGW material much more accessible via their system than material which challenges the IPCC, AGW supporters, and Gore.
The numbers for ‘climategate’ indicate that the issue is not simply going to disappear in a matter of hours or a few days. The integrity and ethic of KEY PLAYERS have been rightfully questioned and the proof is now public. A sad day for the scientific community.
Several of us concurred in prior comments on other threads:
”climagegate” definitely WAS offered in the Google search suggestions list for a time a couple days ago, and then ”became disappeared”.
. . . leading me to suggest WRT last comment in this thread start; i.e.:
”Google might want to rethink this.”
I think it’s crystal clear that having climategate ”go missing” in the Google suggestions list was very definitely and deliberately ”thought about”, from the partisan AGW agenda perspective.
As another WUWT commenter astutely pointed out on another thread:
Al Gore sits (or at least used to sit) on the Google BOD. ‘nough said.
Bing shows 50,800,000 results
http://www.bing.com/search?q=climategate&go=&qs=n&qb=1&FORM=AXRE
Anthony: Possibly a separate WUWT post for this? Have a nice Saturday Anthony! 🙂
Cheers,
Invariant
Latest from Telegraph: Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html
In fact, Bing recommends climategate as soon as you get to “cli…”, and returns 50.8 million hits.
It seems the MSM is cracking. The Times has just weighed in with a scorching dismissal of the abuse of process:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936289.ece
The results for a Google “climategate” search are now 722,000!!!
They have totally ripped the guts out of the result numbers. It’s not even a subtle manipulation, it’s a blatant fraud. Google are globalist scum.
Here is a screenshot
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/gg7/brockelever/climategate-google.jpg
Just googled “climategate”
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=climategate&meta=&aq=f&oq=
Results 1 – 10 of about 10,600,000 for climategate. (0.23 seconds)
You know what?
I think I will switch to Bing.
Google is known for removing unwanted search terms. Another autosuggest that disappeared is CRU Email. Type in CRU and the autosuggest would suggest CRU Email, now CRU suggests nothing.
Google goes up and down because it is a distributed system in continuous update, trying to handle so much information that the counts you see are nothing more than estimates. It takes close to a month for even old dead static information to stabilize in search results when major index updates are rolled out.
All of the search engines have pretty much the same problems and as long as the web keeps adding pages it will only get worse.
Been there, done that, today a few grand tomorrow nada.
Between Google, Wiki and the roaring silence from the MSM, I’m beginning to get a very uneasy INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS feeling about this.