Yet, news stories covering it are dropping at the same time.
I got an email from Ahrvid Engholm, an IT journalist in Stockholm, Sweden who was concerned about the “autosuggest” for the word “climategate” in Google disappearing. He was concerned about the post November 25th trend and invited me to take a look at a tool I was unfamiliar with called “Google Trends”. He writes:
Go to Google Trends – www.google.com/trends – write “climategate” and something very interesting will appear in front of your eyes. Select “The last 30 days” to the right.
I did just that, and here is the resulting graph, edited a bit to fit in the WUWT blog space, but you can see for yourself at the link provided.
Link: http://trends.google.com/trends?q=climategate&date=mtd&geo=all&ctab=0&sort=0&sa=N
Note that the trend graph is 4 days behind in data, which is apparently normal. But, there’s some interesting things happening.
Many people outside of the USA may not be aware of why there was a drop around November 25th in the Search Volume Index.
It is likely caused by the second largest US American Holiday called “Thanksgiving” which was on Thursday, November 26th. The drop starts on Nov 25th as people start their travel plans and leave the office and schools early.
Then the upwards trend resumes on November 28th when people in the USA return from that holiday.
No nefarious Google motives here. But with the rising search popularity, it does make a fly in the ointment for why Google’s “autosuggest” function in the search box is no longer suggesting “climategate” as it once was..
Does Al Gore’s position on Google’s senior advisory board have any bearing? In Al’s bio at http://www.algore.com/about.html he says:
“A member of the Board of Directors of Apple Computer, Inc. and a Senior Advisor to Google, Inc. Gore is also Visiting Professor at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.”
It seems he has done some “advising” of Google’s search quality in the past. Here’s a story from the New Yorker via Newsbusters about that very subject. There is some history there that has some bearing on the current situation.
In the case of “Climategate”, Mr. Gore’s ability to continue his current speaking engagements might be hampered. Thus, there could well be a motive for him doing some “advising” in this case. A phone call might be all it took.
Word from some others doing investigations say Google senior staff has told them the removal of “Climategate” from the autosuggest in web searches is algorithm based.
But the Google trends data suggest otherwise, particularly since it was restored and operating in Googles autosuggest feature back on November 28th, as documented here on WUWT.
Now it is gone again. Did the removal of “climategate” from the autosuggest feature make recent Google Trends data lower that the peak on November 29th? Only time will tell us.
In the meantime, I’m switching my default search engine to Bing, which doesn’t have such problems and doesn’t have Al Gore as an “advisor”.
Bing on November 28th:
click for larger imageUPDATE:
10 minutes later…
In other news, apparently Phil Jones has been interviewed by the Police.
Googlegate?
climate-gate is still in the list, and on the first page, but climategate is gone.
But if you type it out without letting Google “help” you, you get ~19.8 million pages.
I just tried it on Bing and it never did offer me “climate gate”.
Yahoo did. It shows 41,000,000 hits.
When I tried a few other terms, such as “climate fraud” and “climate scam”, it did auto suggest after the first two letters of fraud and scam, though they were not the first suggestions.
When I went to Google News, “climategate” was the first thing that came up, and that was after only typing in “c”. Not sure if that was because I had been doing other searches involving climate and google remember that, or if it was genuinely the first thing google thought of. So maybe google is ok after all.
Wow! I just stumbled across this video – “Message to the Environmental Movement – Climategate”. Not everyone here will agree with everything said, but I really relate to it. It is very well done, and very powerful. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hftsk4gWqI
I just ran the check on my google search widget.
It shows climate-gate as an option. I guess lots of people use hyphens in their words?
I have the same problem with Bing now….no autosuggest at any point in the typing of climategate……
just tried bing.com and it seems that climategate does not come up with any suggestions
Bing now is not showing climate gate on their autosuggest. Yahoo does though.
December 2nd, 1537 EST.
i’ve never noticed the autosuggest once, but i am always using “climategate”. However its interesting if you google search “global warming” and drill down to news stories; at least 1/4 or so mention climategate, so its contaminating their whole system anyway! ahahahahaha (evil laugh)
I just tried typing in ‘climategate’ and the autosuggest seams to be working on my computer – as soon as it get to ‘cli’, ‘climategate’ pops up (at the poing of typing in ‘cl’ I get ‘club of rome’ WUWT?).
Using ‘Bing’, when I get to ‘climateg’ autosuggest pops up ‘climateguard’, and when I type in the entire text I get a blank and no autosuggest for ‘climategate’. Go figure……..
Wow “climate-gate” is there but “climategate” is not. That HAS to be intentional. Crazy.
I see they have replaced ClimateGate with climate-gate.
Climate Gate scandal is now in the autosuggest for Bing.
What, we are having problems now with how to spell a newly coined phrase?
This is clearly hitting nerves.
Ah, a War of Nerves. Ok.
Don’t Blingk.
I also tried typing this into Bing and its auto-search never provided me with the word “Climategate”
Isn’t Google a sponsor of Copenhagen?
I put Tiger Woods into the same graphing system on google, and there is a spike upwards on both graphs hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Google now suggesting “Climate-gate”.
I did suggest a few days back that maybe Google should not be to blame due to technical various issues. I take it all back and apologise. Since Al Gore is involved with Google and Autosuggest used to appear and Climategate is still a popular search term.
I should have had my sceptical radar on full blast in these times of data manipulation. I think one of Google’s motos is “do no evil.”
So Al Gore phoned Google to tell them to take ‘climategate’ out of autosuggest (but not the news page)? And this so he could still get speaking engagements? Sorry, thats the dumbest thing I’ve heard since looking at harry read me.
Hi Al,
Sorry we are going to have to cancel that speech, I just looked at Google autosuggest and it seems ‘climategate’ is showing up. Hope the deposit is refundable.
Yours,
Greenpeace
I bet the company that makes automatic climate gates are doing a roaring trade right now!
Google probably forgot to block ‘climate-gate’ from the autosuggestions. Just give it some time until they block that as well.
I wonder if both bing and google have autosuggest algorithms that consider search load, and drop autosuggest offerings when server load is too high? It might be interesting to see if there is any pattern regarding when that suggestion is available and when it appears.
The only legitimate reason I can think of is for load management on their servers.
Microsoft also has a demonstrated interest in pitching global warming awareness.
http://gamerscoreblog.com/team/archive/2007/06/10/551118.aspx
Larry
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/google-greentech-power-plants/
Look what I found, looks like Google is cashing in at the moment so Climate Gate will lose them money?
Google news unlike Google web has climategate at the top after “clim.”
If you type “cl” into the Google news page, “climategate” is the first auto-suggestion. However, on the general search page, the approved spelling appears to be hyphenated “climate-gate”, and comes in lower and later. In any case, I don’t think we need to apply conspiratorial thinking to this one. Gore’s Google affiliation notwithstanding. The whole -gate terminology created by the Watergate Hotel break-in scandal tortures the language excessively, but I suppose we’re stuck with it.
I don’t search for terms like “climategate”; rather, I go to favorite websites like this one. When I type “cli” into Google, Yahoo or Bing, I do not get any prompts at all for Climategate. So I think the algorithm remembers the searches you have done in the past.
Try Altavista…yes they are still around
http://www.altavista.com/web/results?q=Climate+gate&stq=40
AltaVista found 41,600,000 results
On Google
climate gate scandal
climate-gate
are still autosuggestions
looks like I was wrong – if you clear your ‘history’, and google climategate, it is a no-show.
I’ve been using the Clusty search engine for a couple of years now:
http://www.clusty.com
It doesn’t seem to have an auto-suggest feature. (Well, it might but if it does I haven’t enabled that option.)
As of this moment, Clusty gives “at least 78,800” hits for climategate.
Paul
Google was auto suggesting Climategate when you just typed ‘Clim’ for several days. The top suggestion.
Then it disappeared completely.
There is absolutely no way it’s disappearance is algorithm based.
Search Twitter for ‘climategate’ (you need an account). Everyone is all over this.
Really, Google, less people are searching for Climategate than Climate Guatemala?
I think not.
As a comparison, you can put terms together separated by commas… as an example I did climategate and climate change… interesting results
http://www.google.com/trends?q=climategate%2C+climate+change&ctab=0&geo=all&date=mtd&sort=1
I also started using Bing to protest Googles missing auto suggestion on the 28th. Bing popped up with “climategate” after typing “cli”, now (12/02) nothing! Wow, has anybody heard of a response on this from Microsoft or Google yet?
Re: Robinson (12:27:12) :
In other news, apparently Phil Jones has been interviewed by the Police.
which reminds me of a classic UK cartoon of a man in a prison cell saying to his cellmate:
“That’s the last time I help police with their enquiries”
Perhaps Climate-gate is more correct grammatically and the algorithms will choose the correct grammatical form over the ‘new’ word Climategate. I know that my Firefox spelling corrector does exactly that. In fact the second spelling is being red-underlined right now whereas the first is OK.
I’m using a search engine at http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com and got 191 million hits on “climategate” this evening, no auto suggestion facility. 12 Hours ago this morning the number of hits was 101 million. Seems like some of the other search engines are corrupting the search. I’m searching from Europe.
I would switch from google, but the other engins give me ….well….crap! google-gate or whatever, google give the best results, so I don’t plan on switching any time soon.
Alta-who? Oh ya, I used to use them before google arived.
I don’t know whether Google’s autosuggest is country specific (I am in the UK), but it gives me climategate as soon as I type in c.
Just typed in “climateg” and got about 10 suggestion but NONE for Climategate – time 9pm GMT.
Note if you have typed in the complete word climategate then sunsequent searches will return that word after a couple of letters because it is held in the browser memory
Wouldn’t be the first time Google, or more generally a technology company from California, tinkered with their products…
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6920000.ece
AltaVista gives about 20,300,000 hits when entered. ClimateGate came up after entering “cl”. Not sure though whether this was from the cache or autosuggest.
Well, I managed to get a Climategate connected article published at Daily Mail On Line. Gives Mr McIntyre a bit of a mention. See here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1232662/Dont-hold-breath-expecting-climate-change-data-revealed.html
Google has been part of the scam from the beginning. How can they not be since Al Gore is one of their advisors? I don’t understand Bing, though. Time to switch to Yahoo Search.
I’ve always been able to get climategate only typing in “cl” or “cli”. I think the mixed results are due to browsers/OS/etc…
Team Obama trying to keep the facade in place:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9CBCN6G0&show_article=1
Don’t worry folks, we can spin this as a temporary slowing of the increasing trend in climategate searches…
Remember to hide the decline… and delete these bytes after reading!
startpage.com provides anonymous searches and will soon have a proxy server for completely private web browsing!
Maybe google was telling you the truth.
Its just that you mis-interpreted them..
“the removal of “Climategate” from the autosuggest in web searches is ALGOREthm based”
It is interesting where peoples mind’s are at.
“Climategate” just hit a Search Volume Index of 6.00 and it took10 days to do so according to GoogleTrends.
“Tiger Woods” hit a Search Volume Index of 7.50 in just 2 days after his (hmm, hmm) crash.
For reference ACORN peaked at 6.00 for just one day in September.
I tried a comparison of ‘climategate’, ‘climate-gate’ and ‘climate gate’
http://www.google.com/trends?q=climategate%2Cclimate-gate%2Cclimate+gate&ctab=0&geo=all&date=mtd&sort=0
‘climategate’ seems the most popular by far.
Keith Minto (13:03:16) :
Perhaps we should go back and change all the refereces from Watergate to Water-gate.
Seems rather silly.
What kind of a statement are Google and Bing trying to make here?
I’ve now swapped to Lycos. It’s quick, and you only need to type ‘cl’ to get a suggested search.
Seems Google are in the pocket of the AGW conspiritors, as per the rest of the MSM???
Anthony, just looking at this post about google, and the last about the Science museum, it seems to me that there is one thing that we (“we” meaning -anyone who likes their science to be truthful + verifiable.) really need is a source/website online, which plots on a worldwide map exactly where and what organisations/individuals are linked to which MMGW falsehood, trick, exaggeration, or omission (like google’s autosuggest) etc,.
The Man made Global Warming fraud has been targeted specifically at children and ordinary people, and is far too wide reaching for most people to grasp, especially with the MSM media still largely determined to promote it. We need to make the ability to grasp and understand the fraud simple – a child/idiot friendly thing.
We need a colourful, click on visual one-stop-shop, map that makes the huge size and scope of this worldwide fraud immediately visible and understandable. There is a real need to show how all these frauds and interconnections (especially the scientists, politicians and media groups) feed off each other and control what we are supposed to think and do. I lack the resources and knowledge of the perpetrators involved to create such a thing, but maybe another of your readers could create one? Wouldn’t a fraudmap be an invaluable tool to everyone fighting this monstrosity?
-Joe. (Please delete this if such a thing already exists or you feel this request is inappropriate.)
it’s worse than just the autosuggest problem.
i do daily searches for various topics + youtube and, until climategate, google will show multiple youtube videos at the top of the results.
for days now google shows no youtube videos at the top of the results (unlike bing, for example, which has a few); instread, google has been having some ‘rare’ corpmedia piece, more likely a blog than an actual article, downplaying the significance of climategate.
when u do go to a youtube climategate video from further down in the results, u get the oddest collection of videos, nothing whatsoever like u would get in the past. all that shows in one youtube page today is 29 videos -with multiple videos by two persons who many people would consider extreme rightwingers or ‘conspiracy theorists’. it is so manipulated i can barely believe my eyes.
when trying to bring up ordinary individuals who are no doubt making thousands of climategate videos, the best i can find by further linking, is the song ‘hide the decline’.
as someone who goes to youtube very often, i can only tell u it is UTTERLY COMPROMISED on the climategate issue.
and who owns youtube…….no prizes for saying GOOGLE.
Steve Schapel:
Here is the link to the original video:
Like most of the Bay Area, I’m sure Google is comprised of an overwhelming majority of liberals. This whole climategate thing has to be a real sore point for most of the looney lefties who work there. Clearly, climategate as an autosuggest has been overridden by someone in a position of authority there. Given all the crazy crap that arises as autosuggests ( see gtards.tumblr.com for evidence of this), it’s impossible to believe that someone didn’t override this.
I tested this on Metacrawler. It did not recognise climategate for automatic suggestion but found about 20 search engines with articles: which it lists.
It did suggest the alternate two word and i tried this with no result: likewise using a hyphen. Zilch.
So Climategate is out there, you just have to look a little harder.
Kindest Regards
Cover up of biblical proportions seems to be unfolding.
REPLY: I don’t know that it is a cover up, particularly with the millions of web page hits now available, but it is interesting. I think “cover up” is overreaching. -A
Is there an email address at google where we can voice our opinion on them removing Climategate from the autosuggestions?
Check out a Popular Mechanics Article from April 1950 that I found titled “Grandma’s right about the weather”. It described a “warm-up cycle” that began in 1920 and peaked in 1940 but that there was a general warming trend since 1912.
Link at: http://books.google.com/books?id=6NkDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=popular+mechanics+1950+US+temperature&source=bl&ots=4iQAfv6cNV&sig=oogZzxMSnRX0K7jctLtUWlwub1E&hl=en&ei=GcoWS8ymDZGKNL3i1KcG&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CA4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Notable Quotes include (my comments are bolded and in italics):
“All over the world glaciers are receding. Professor Kimble points out that some are melting so fast that they will disappear in a few more decades under present conditions”. (I guess that means they should all be gone by now since it’s been six decades)
The article goes on
“What does this all mean?… According to Dr. Clarence A Mills of the University of Cincinnati, the period of rising temperatures may result in smaller adults in the US, reversing a trend that has continued for centuries. There may also be a retardation of mental keenness and the rate of development.” (We can definitely say that those predictions have come true. In the 21st Century people will believe anything a scientist tells them)
“However, there is a note of caution in Professor Kimble’s book. Some portion of these changes may be due to man-made conditions. To some extent, higher temperatures in towns and cities may result from the loss of heat by buildings. Heat engineers estimate that in a city the size of Montreal, the amount of man-made heat escaping into the lower atmosphere on a day when there is a good inversion could raise temperatures three or four degrees.” (Amazing that 60 years ago people understood the UHI effect better than we do today)
“The Canadian Geographer hastens to add that our weather records go back only a short distance into history-actually only seconds on the clock of the earth’s life span”
“The severe winter of 1948-1949 which will probably be remembered in some parts of the US as the year of the Great Blizzard, provides some evidence of an impending temperature recession. However, one year’s evidence is not enough to support a prediction of a reversal in the generation-old trend toward warmer weather”
Thanks
Ed
Climategate and “climate change” both give 21.7million hits on google now.
That’s it. I’m ditching Google as my home page. Morons.
Let’s all switch Google off. Period.
An excerpt from: http://ace.mu.nu/
Iowahawk Explains the Cult of the Virgin Gaia
Plus: Lots of Updates Including Mark Steyn
—Ace
Now, if you’ve been following this, Mann’s entire temperature reconstruction method rests on knowing (observing) recent periodic global temperatures, y. Quibbling about principle components aside, that’s the dependent variable in the backcasts. But as is now becoming increasingly plain, y was constructed from an undocumented process that took raw ground station data and ran it through a black box that included smoothing, filtering, inference, manipulation, baling wire, glue and the juice of one whole lemon. This is what the CRU people are calling “valued added homogenized data.” Or what normal people call “made up horseshit.” It’s also the temperature data that dozens, if not hundreds of AGW studies are based on.
Try IXQUICK, no auto suggest. Me thinks Google and Bing to powerful. If you can`t search it you can`t see it.
Guys, I think you’re expecting more determinacy than Google provides, or something. “Climategate” is the first hit for “c l i m a t e g” for me.
McKitrick interviewed on UK’s Channel 4 news earlier (not sure if it’s available in all regions)
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/hacked+emails+revive+climate+debate/3447647
I’ve been playing with the Google Trends and have found some interesting things about some of the other keywords. I’ve posted these results here:
http://pathstoknowledge.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/shaping-the-news-a-conspiracy-of-values-a-conspiracy-of-belief-in-agw
Pat Michaels (CATO) was just on Cavuto (Fox) and ripped ’em a new one – Jones, et al. Made mention of the Google hits on Climategate. Also made a few points regarding the political end of this with the upcoming elections, etc. next Nov. Altogether an excellent interview. Should be available on the net soon.
I just tried and I am not getting anything for climategate or climate-gate on google, although when I search either, they both give more results than global warming or climate change. Huh
The search engines actually are Al Gore-ithm based.
BTW to answer your search question: I use Clusty – http://clusty.com/ . An excellent search and clustering engine. You should try it out.
In my Google Chrome Browser window, when I type in “clima” it does auto suggest “climategate”. I’m not sure if that’s a reflection of my own activity or if it takes it’s cues from Google’s algorithms.
Yahoo.com – autosuggest has “climate gate” – selecting that one, the first entry listed is about the Bush administration in 2003 denying global warming.
I would not change Google for Bing if I could drive my car from Holland to the UK over a frozen North-Sea to protest at the CRU building in Norwich. Antony as a writer of one of the best science blogs why don’t you just ask them what is happening here?
I did not have climate with that gate.
I did not search that climate.
I did not gate that climate.
I did not have climate with that search.
I did not climb at that gate.
107.000.000 goole hits
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/3928/112200902902.png
Promptings in the UK:-
3 days ago or so, Google Climategate prompt was off, then on, then off
2 days ago or so, Bing Climategate was on – typing CL was enough
Today, neither Google nor Bing.
But Google News prompts Climategate – by just typing C.
All other search engines – no prompts. But overriding no-prompt,
Altavista 18 million plus devastating memory of what I googled months ago
Bing 2.5 million
Yahoo 15 million
Ask Jeeves 7 million
Google 21 million
I did not gate that search.
And the worry here is what? People interested won’t know how to spell such a complicated word?
Looks like a bridge too far in tinfoil-hat land to me. . .
Yeah, folks, just calm down. So what if Google doesn’t auto-complete “climategate”? It’s not going to amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
This sort of speculation (e.g. Al Gore is gaming Google) is rather silly and is dragging down the level of discourse on this blog.
Even more interesting: type climategate, climate change. You can see that climategate searches has almost reached searches on the general topic of climate change. Will skeptics out number the mainstream?
Oh I forgot to say, they are interviewing him as a victim of crime, not a perpetrator. This is not unusual for those of you who know how the UK criminal justice system works; you can be sent to jail for battering a burglar in your own home.
Another good metric is YouTube. Gets about 1800 videos and several hundred thousand views of those.
Here’s Cavuto and Michaels on YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn6pg1xZCyY
Have no fear. Its 21:52 GMT and google just returned 22,400,000 hits fo typed in “Climategate”
Ooops!! I’m a bit behind the times but shows people are still very interested.
“Al Gore-ithm”
Thanks for that one, Sarah. LOL.
This link is a promotion obviously with google support.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/3120684/Aussie-Googler-tackles-climate-change
Found this message to environmentalists in a comment on Jo Nova’s website. It’s very good indeed.
RoyJ (13:04:41) :
I don’t know whether Google’s autosuggest is country specific (I am in the UK), but it gives me climategate as soon as I type in c.
It doesn’t auto-suggest anything in my part of the UK.
Climategate is being autsuggested by Goolge now. It is secind. Number one is “climategate email search”
Maybe it’s the Climategate Warm Period that has now gone into a Google Ice Age?
22,400,000 hits in less than two weeks and this is not news. MSM must have been transported to the same planet Gore is on cause they are not on this one! I know I should remain calm and reposed but man this seriously pi$$es me off! Its almost like they just cannot admit there is a problem at all. Not a peep here in Canada in either of the main presses except national post.! What the $@##$#@%^$^%$#%$#^%%$#^%$^%$#%$#%$#%$%$^ is going on with these people!
Now I feel better!
The autosuggest process is ENTIRELY automated; the idea that there’s some conspiracy here is really misinformed…
Climategate-gate?
type climategate in google and get climate guatemala… very nice job google, not suprised at all. ;]
someone who has knowledge of the google tech should ask them to clarify the situation; its at least strange, since for example twitter, tiger or britney are all time favorite searches, and their autosugest still works.
you should link videos like Hide The Decline – Climategate http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEiLgbBGKVk so it will get more hits
also we should start a channel on twitter. you have lots of visits here, we should take advantage of that.
also, cnn just pun on a poll on http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2009/12/02/has-scientific-community-has-been-honest-about-global-warming/
[snip]
I don’t get either on google auto suggest.
Just how extensive is this scam ? Google and Microsoft (bing) are part of it. The mainsteam press is involved. None of our politicians (even Tony Abbot) have mentioned it publically.
I feel the final fallout will be massive !
Not sure it is anything nefarious. Google’s auto suggestion can produce odd results as well. Just take a visit to autocompleteme.com. The most recent post showed what one would get typing in “is it”. Here is what they got:
is it illegal to dress up as batman in australia
Sent a query into Google on this – will be interested to see if they reply.
Interestingly, Google Advanced Search turns up 1.4m hits for Climategate but Google search will only lead to this when you search “Climategate”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
Try Scroogle,it searches Google anonymously and cuts out the crappy advertising as a bonus.Works on Linux,not sure about the blue screen of death.
Anthony,
ask Jeeves, please
Bill W
http://uk.ask.com/
Don’t worry that the FOI leaker released blocks of captive data critical to check on the veracity of the “science”.
There’s no reason to think about the vary strange computer codes used to manipulate the data that’s based on “lost” station and temperture easurements.
That an internationally recognized journal, with all it’s editors and reviewrs missed these minor flaws should be of no concern to anyone other than a few troublemakers.
The Nature editiorial of 3 December should set your minds at ease:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
Never play poker with folks who can run a bluff and palm cards, then call
YOU a cheater !
I suggest that you try this with different levels of cookie enablement. Your previous search history – if cookies are enabled, seems to make a difference. Alll tests need to be done on Privacy High (IE speak) settings
I’d seen a few days ago that Anthony had posted that the search term, “Climategate” had surpassed “global warming” in Google search results. That inspired me to note on my blog the following day (as the number of search results grew ever larger) that “Climategate” had even bypassed an even bigger prey, i.e. “Al Gore”.
Today, as the number of Google search results continues to explode (now over 20,000,000) I discovered that “Climategate” had even passed “Barack Obama” who has a mere 16,000,000 results.
http://algorelied.com/?p=3326
Where will it stop? Will it even pass the heavy-weight champ, “Sex”? Well, that’s probably asking for a bit too much.
When I type in cli into Bing, the second auto suggest on the list is for Real Climate. The first auto suggest concerns Obama’s birth certificate. Climategate is nowhere to be found. I would speculate that there is a message being sent.
Is there any reason that can be forwarded why any person should believe that Google Autosuggest directly mirrors Google Trends? Does anyone have any idea how Google Autosuggest actually works?
We do know that Google Autosuggest can be downright wacky in its suggestions – there are enough jokes about this on many websites.
So, are people seeing conspiracy where there is none? Patterns where there are none? I hope not. That would be too ironic.
I have no idea how Google Autosuggest or Google Trends work, but comparing “climategate” with “climate change” in Google Trends paints an interesting pattern (which I do not know how to interpret).
Compare: Climategate, climate emails, global warming, climate change
Climategate is taking over from “climate emails” in searches.
Climategate now equals searches for “climate change” and is already over half of “global warming”.
RE: Ed Scott (13:29:46) :
That’s a good point that I’ve been thinking about as well lately. All the proxy studies used the instrument record (CRU being the biggest fish in a three fish pond) to calibrate… I think, if I heard correctly, these were even used to calibrate the satellites which have been diverging from GISS since 2003 (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/18/giss-divergence-with-satellite-temperatures-since-the-start-of-2003/)
Right now I get –
When I type “climate” – “Climate-gate” and “Climate gate scandal” is on the list.
When I type “climate ” (note the “space” after “climate”) – “Climate gate scandal” remains on the list.
When I type “climate g” – “Climate gata scandal” is at the top of the list.
When I type “climageg” (or “climatega” or “climategat” or “climategate”) – nothing similar to “climategate” is on the list.
It would seem that Google has decided that it should be “Climategate”, not “Climate Gate”.
However, when I type “Climategate” and do the search, there are 21,100,000 hits, yet only 6,540,000 for “climate gate”.
Odd, eh?
A check in Canada shows that it is mainly in BC and Ontario that people are searching for Climate gate, with BC being at the front.
Google definitely did autosuggest climategate and now it doesn’t. Bing autosuggested it until earlier today and now it doesn’t. Even looking at ‘climate change’ brings up only mainstream propaganda sites, not a mix of angles.
I actually find this, taken together with the continued mainstream media silence, a lot scarier and more sinister than the idea of an immoral group of scientists getting carried away and fudging their data while being egged on by eager financial and political groups.
I’m not a conspiract theorist but even to me It’s starting to look like deliberate widespread censorship.
Chris
OT
Well I’ll be dammed! The BBC Climagate dam has just broken wide open with FOUR Climagate interviews on the Radio 4 ‘The World Tonight’ radio programme, one after the other! Here’s the game changer: Michael Mann has (in the first long interivew) DISOWNED Phil Jones repeatedly. Mann on three occasions condemned Jones for the emails he sent to him (Mann), saying ‘I cannot defend that’ and such like. This is stunning stuff.
The second interview was with five members of the public who worked in scientific fields. All five of them said they did not believe global warming – so the interviews were edited to about a minute and a half!
The third report was by Paul Moss into why the public were sceptical, with one scientist saying ‘There is no debate to be had on global warming.’
The fourth interview was with the ‘climate environment’ editor of the warmist ‘New Scientist’ magazine. ‘Science is all about debate’, she said – and then said the science was settled on global warming. :-))
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtl3
Install ixquick Startpage HTTPS Privacy Search Engine and be safe:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13036
Gives you 48,499,072 hits for climate-gate.
Why would Sweden and Australia return more traffic for Climategate than USA?
Climategate is back on google….
Stolen Climate E-Mails Cause A Ruckus In Congress
This story in on NPR website….for those who may want to commment.
Here, now, UK, I see others have got Climategate on Google autosuggest. No autosuggest here either now or during the past hour, either on Firefox or on IE. WUWT?
Google
21 million results for Climategate
http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com/
188 million results (from “Google”) for Climategate
184 million for Climate Change
ps
Seeing the depressing standard of the average returns of Climategate on all these search engines today… makes me realize what an extraordinary jewel this website is. Once again Anthony, thank you, I don’t know how you do it.
Switched to bing sometime ago – cause Google is just too intrusive (Bing probably is as well, but I do like the pictures!)- but on the auto-suggest topic – Google has Gore , but Gates and Balmer are up to their pelvises in supporting the notion of man-caused climate change too. Not that there could be any conspiracies here ….
Try this Google Trends search. People are continuing to have an interest in CRU, and we can imagine what has happened to Phil Jones news in the most recent 4 days. CRU probably leaped up quickly because the “climategate” name hadn’t become popular until later.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=climategate%2C+global+warming+emails%2C+cru%2C+phil+jones&ctab=0&geo=all&date=mtd&sort=0
Hmm, if I type in “clim” climategate is right on top of the autosuggest list from google. Not sure what’s going on…
Australia… because they’ve become aware enough of the climate science mess that they replaced the head of their Liberal party with someone who isn’t trying to push cap & trade legislation. The climategate issues were brought up during their ruckus.
I’m also curious about Sweden doing the most searching for climategate.
Robinson (14:01:59) : and others.
This is an excellent and powerful piece. I feel that it is a “call to arms” for the deep-green enviros. I love that it destroys warmism and enviro-chique.
It really looks like Google / whatever is doing different things for different viewers, even in the same country.
I didn’t spell it out loudly, but Give Me Back My Google clearly uses Google, yet Google gives 21 million returns on Climategate, and GMBMG gives 188 million.
WUWT? Ostrichgate? Carbonistagate? Goregooglegate? Climateconspiracygate? no, can’t be, I’m not an alarmist…
Terry (14:54:57) :
OT
Well I’ll be dammed! The BBC Climagate dam has just broken wide open with FOUR Climagate interviews on the Radio 4 ‘The World Tonight’ radio programme, one after the other! Here’s the game changer: Michael Mann has (in the first long interivew) DISOWNED Phil Jones repeatedly. Mann on three occasions condemned Jones for the emails he sent to him (Mann), saying ‘I cannot defend that’ and such like. This is stunning stuff
It’s every crimatologist for himself now. Mann himself is being investigated by Penn State after a furious load opf protest mails from Alumni. He may be the first to “go from Penn State to the State Pen”
Following up on my last comment, did you read of how Judy Curry trashed the railway engineer, Pachuri 🙂
The wagon’s falling apart; self-preservation is the order of the day … yeah!!!
Quoting:
“Robinson (12:27:12) :
In other news, apparently Phil Jones has been interviewed by the Police.”
Commenting:
Did Sting give him “the first degree”?
But seriously, this is where the second-string players start to pull out their token skeptical papers that they wrote for CYA. Keep an eye out!
Google is now autocompleting for climategate. I did find it interesting that if you search for the same term by 24 hrs, week, month and year on the advance search you vastly different numbers of hits.
Guys you’re all a little too fixated on the search engine thing. Google and all other search engines are very large operations that use many computers to serve the traffic.
The results minute to minute will be different because you’re request will be served by different groups of computers each time. also, the total number of hits is a guess produced by a statistical algorithm (takes too long to count 10 million pages each time). And my guess is autocomplete will be bootstrapped of the local results within their computer network so depending on which computer is answering your request you may or may not get the term “climategate”. As time goes by the term should start turning up more.
Search for Google’s “map-reduce” algorithm for a more technical understanding of how searching is handled.
Ya – yesterday I had “Clim” get climategate and then about 8 hours later “ClimateGate” didn’t even get climategate.
I checked about an hour ago and same thing “ClimateGate” didn’t get autosuggest for climategate.
But now its back to “Clim” getting climategate as top suggestion.
Google:
Climategate 197 Million
Climate gate 6.6 Million
Climate-gate 28 Million
Yahoo:
Climategate 11.8 Million
Climate gate 42.4 Million
Climate-gate 24.8 Million
Bing:
Climategate 63.1 Million
Climate gate 6.6 Million
Climate-gate 50.9 Million
Google wasn’t auto-suggesting ‘climategate’ for me when this was posted but now it is. So I don’t know if it is algorithmic or what.
While I am *delighted* to see Climategate breaking into the wider public consciousness and give thanks to all those who’ve been contributing here and CA over the years leading up to this, I’d just to implore everyone to stop pandering to silly conspiracy theories involving Al Gore and Google. You really do run the risk of allowing yourselves to be painted as paranoid cranks.
Google Suggest is an imperfect piece of kit that changes daily… hourly in response to all kinds of things. I work with Google all day every day and see results changing in ways that often appear bizarre if you’re tracking them for any purpose. I’ve even run experiments to see if I can influence the results that crop up without any success.
Like a *lot* of things in Google’s algorithm, it is nowhere near as ‘scientific’ as people think – it is, after all, a software program attempting to decipher human intention from inputted queries: a task that companies with as much money and brainpower as Microsoft have as yet failed to achieve.
Curiousgeorge (13:33:58) :
Pat Michaels (CATO) was just on Cavuto (Fox) and ripped ‘em a new one – Jones, et al. Made mention of the Google hits on Climategate. Also made a few points regarding the political end of this with the upcoming elections, etc. next Nov. Altogether an excellent interview. Should be available on the net soon.
—————————————–
Would be nice to see. After seeing Bill O’Reilly’s exceptionally pathetic handling of Climategate last night with John Stossel I began to lose faith that Fox was going to make an issue of ClimateGate. But your comment revives my hopes.
S. Andersson (14:07:50) :
Maybe it’s the Climategate Warm Period
it’s very hot at its core: several million degrees
So, I just went to Google and typed in “Climategate,” and surprise, surprise! Google has put Climategate back into the suggestion box.
However, this morning—before Watts posted this article—while I was playing around with Google, there were over 16,100,000 hits that would come up when I entered “Climategate” into the search parameter.
Now, it’s down to about 12,000,000 hits! Gee, where did 4 million hits go? If anything, the hit count should have increased, NOT decreased!
Still playing games, are we Google? Whatever happened to Google’s motto “Don’t Be Evil?”
Cheers
walshamatic (15:05:57) :
Stolen Climate E-Mails Cause A Ruckus In Congress
NPR says they were stolen. They have the scoop on that?
Actually no one knows yet how it happened. To say they were stolen is from the left of politics; the same place global warming is living from.
Hey looks like they’ve nobbled Yahoo now! I don’t get an autosuggest on climategate anymore!
FWIW Google did give me an autosuggest for googlegate after I typed in all but the last letter. About 12,000 hits.
If Google is gaming the search results, maybe somebody will come forward and spill the beans.
A better name for this would have been ‘warmergate.’
Weird… Google suggests ClimateGate for me when i write Climate. This was not the case a few days ago though.
Not only does it suggests ClimateGate, but it also suggests it before climate change. I tested this in both firefox and opera with cleared cache/history, so it is definitely not cached in my browser.
hi
if you google ‘france greenpeace assembly’, you get this among others :
http://www.france24.com/en/20091202-greenpeace-activists-french-parliament-copenhagen-environment-national-assembly
Here, there is hardly anything in the msm and this gets me, as our right gvt had included left ministers and a environment pact with loads of measures, yet green peace demands even more with a bomb alert during the day.
This isn’t even about climategate, this is sheer outright pressure with threats if they don’t agree to more greenhouse reduction agreements. Please you americans don’t hit Sarkozy, see the pressure he’s against and with a high level green movement.. it’s not easy for him. All the tv medias are silent and most of the main newspapers, yet there are alternative medias and websites that are talking about it.
Try “smartpage.com” instead of bing or google.
Dec 02 2009 08:38pm EST, typing clim, returns the word climategate at the top of the suggest list in my google search bar in IE8. Have no idea why it isn’t working for others. Maybe clearing form data, or cache will solve the problem.
THIS IS WHY I USE STARTPAGE.COM OR IXQUICK.COM FOR ALL MY SEARCHING NEEDS
Just a heads up, I noticed that there are regional differences in Google in different parts of the world, which could account for the different suggestions some users are experiencing with Google.
Here in Canada if I use …
Google.ca … (Canada) … climategate does not show up as a suggestion in the auto-suggest no matter how many letters are typed in.
Google.com … (using it here in Canada) … climategate is the first suggestion as soon as one hits 4 letters …”clim”.
For internet net seach, you can use Ixquick:
https://ixquick.com/
1. they at least promise not to collect your IP address
2. note the https (the “s”): you do not need to share your seach with your ISP, the connection is encrypted.
“clim” leads directly to autosuggest of “climategate” at top of list 1 minute ago.
JESUS (18:19:12) :
THIS IS WHY I USE STARTPAGE.COM OR IXQUICK.COM FOR ALL MY SEARCHING NEEDS
I thought Jesus went to God for all of his search needs.
The CIA is also a major shareholder in Google(Facebook too I undeerstand).
maybe all the commotion here has changed something, climate gate scandal was second on the list when I simply typed in climate, on google that is.
I would say there’s a pedant working for Bing. I type in cli and I get ‘climate-gate’, however, all the stories below generally highlight ‘climategate’ without the hyphen.
I’m not paranoid, but I think the man following me is…
AnonyMoose (15:18:52) :
……….”CRU probably leaped up”………..
AnonyMoose (15:23:46) :
………….
“I’m also curious about Sweden doing the most searching for climategate.
”
Cru have a totally different meaning in french. The french have absolutely no idea what is going on. They are safely hunkered down behind their Maginot line
The Swedish version of the BBC, SVT, have openly admitted that they have taken a policy decision to only support the warmist agenda. Only a few local newspapers have written about climategate.
Had a chat with our Gav, apparently that lovely boy Phil is not to be mentioned on UnReal Climate. He has just stood down. Are you going to desert him you havn’t even mentioned this? I said.
Our Gav said Phil said some silly things and kept some stupid emails which mean’t he was on the web for hours and hours defending him.
He is sensitive our Gav some people may think that he his worried for himself, I know that thats not true, he has to save the planet and thats not an easy task is it now.
[snip – no valid email address – see policy page]
FYI: Number of results returned from Google for “climategate” 23.9 million; number of results returned from Google for “climate change” 21.3 million; number of results returned from Google for “global warming” 10.5 million. A very rapid take-up of a new word.
[snip – no valid email address – see policy page]
Big Brother Google and Cloud Computing:
I have always stated that the Cloud Computing is a massive security risk and one can only save encrypted data remotely as a backup (in the best case) and it is nothing new, that is what we had with dumb terminals ad mainframes in 1970.
Now this – Google censors Google Docs:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Docs/thread?tid=35b7c6eb9943e9ed&hl=en
http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/12/01/1419238/The-Cloud-Ate-My-Homework
If you are astonished, raise your hand.
Just a minute ago I got
‘Results 1 – 50 of about 223,000,000 for climategate. (0.11 seconds) ‘
No prompting for it though
After typing ‘watts’ I got ‘watts up with that’ prompted second in the list, 12.7 million results
‘watt’ brought it up 6th.
Just tried it (Australia) and got “climate guatemala” which you’ll be happy to know is quite cool at the moment, low 20’s with some scattered clouds. Tried Glimate-gate and got climate-graphs.co.uk.
After reading this article:
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate
I checked google. Typed in C-L-I and auto suggest offered no words where the next letter was an “M”. But if I typed C-L-I-M, climate gate scandal was the first suggestion. Climate change was the second suggestion.
Latest checking, Dec 3 10:17-10:35AM EST, from Eastern USA:
– Google search never suggests “climategate”; however, typing “clim” brings up “climate gate scandal” as the first suggestion.
– Bing also never suggests “climategate”, but typing “cl” brings up “climate-gate” as the second suggestion.
– Google News does still bring up “climategate” as the top suggestion after typing just “c”. Guess they haven’t “fixed” that yet.
– Yahoo! makes me type to “climat” to get “climate gate” as the third suggestion; adding an “e” moves it up to second. No “climategate”.
It sure looks like (a) “climategate” is being artificially suppressed from appearing, but (b) enough people are trying alternative renderings that some of the most-tried are starting to show up in the suggestion lists.
I also tried searching for “hide the decline”. It was never suggested (after any number of letters) by either Bing or Google, regardless of whether I tried it on Web, News or Video search pages. However, Yahoo! suggested it fifth after typing “hide t”, and it moved up as I typed more letters.
None of three ever suggested “warmergate”, “crudgate”, or “climaquiddick”, but I doubt those’d be common searches anyway.
Weird… Now it is gone again and instead replace with climate gate scandal
Google search is only showing 12.5 million results now and bing (which is auto suggesting nothing for climategate) is showing over 50 million. We live in interesting times.
The speculations in this thread are not consistent with a skeptical mindset.
If AGW activists were making similar observations and claims in the absence of evidence, we’d skewer them, and rightfully so.
If anyone out there is interested in true science, you must read the following report:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Monckton-Caught%20Green-Handed%20Climategate%20Scandal.pdf
When I type “climate” into my google search tool bar, the first thing it suggests is “climate gate”. Is the space thrwoing you off?
Google trends for climategate, climate change, global warming in the USA shows climategate searches have caught up with “climate change” while news coverage for climategate is way below climate change. When will MSM wake up?
After Global Warming and Al Gore, Climategate now has beaten Barack Obama!
http://www.theclimatebet.com/?p=346
Easy! I’ve been using http://duckduckgo.com as my search engine. I Duck It!
[use a valid email and your comments will be posted
your email submitted none@none.com
does not qualify, and I resent your impugning my credibility when you don’t have the integrity to even post a valid email address.
The handle doesn’t speak much for your credibility either.
– see the policy page link under the masthead, otherwise stop posting – Anthony]
Anthony,
I might be a Warmist convert…
I just tried Googling Climategate. Not only does Google search NOT pop up with climategate (Climate Guatemala comes up) but running the search only reveals 1 article and Google jumps straight to it.
So I tried Google Advance search
The page populates with over 1.5mil hits so i tried thumbing through the pages. The first WUWT article appears on page 3. The second article appears on page 6. Page 8 seems to be the last active page (articles 71 thru 80) page 9, and all subsequent pages, all loop back to page 1.
I think AlBore does have influence over Google
Google responds to an inquiry on this:
Crooked, dishonest agenda driven. Odd isn’t the description I would use.
Hmmm… would be interesting if we had other similarly “current” terms that we could run a consistency check on. Not, in the long run, that it matters much one way or the other – people aren’t dependent on the suggestion lists to be able to finish typing in the word.
After looking at the Google Insights, maybe it has something to do with “climategate” being most often combined with other terms. Might affect the way the suggestion algorithms handle it.
Also, it could just be that, after years of the skeptic position(s) being mocked, denigrated, dismissed, slandered, etc., we’ve developed a bad case of “We’re not paranoid – they really ARE all out to get us!”
I know it’s childish and all – but have you tried typing ‘Al Gore is’ into Google and seeing what the auto-suggest options are?
Well, it made me and the kids laugh…
James Delingpole refers us to a plausible – but equally worrying – alternative explanation from Richard North about why important Climategate articles such as the Telegraph’s Christopher Booker’s ‘Greatest Scandal in Science’ one may be being disappeared from the Internet search engines:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/11/googlegate.html
debreuil
“So Al Gore phoned Google to tell them to take ‘climategate’ out of autosuggest (but not the news page)? And this so he could still get speaking engagements? Sorry, thats the dumbest thing I’ve heard since looking at harry read me.”
You are missing the point. Start typing and watch autosuggest. Some days climategate is suggested. Hours later, it is not. Just use common sense. For example, Climax Blues Band appears every time. Every single time. Look at the list of other ‘suggestions’. They are not generating traffic or intense interest. Something other than an algorithm is at work.
Which is exactly the problem with the entire climate debate. You are being told, directed, forced to a single point of view. And god forbid that you are allowed to see the actual data or real state. You can’t be trusted to make the right decisions. Is AGW real? Who knows? We aren’t trusted to decide for ourselves. Best to let the “real smart guys” decide for us. They will let us know how we should live our lives.
So who do we contact to complain? Where do we petition?
I generally like Google, but this sucks to be played like a fiddle.
Just typed in climategate on google and it sent me to climate
If you’ve never heard of climate gate, there’s not much chance you’ll hear about it accidentally from the main-stream media. They’re just not covering it like they do with, say, every other scandal in history.
And if you’re innocently doing a school project on climate change, or wanting to read up on the climate in some country that you’re considering vacationing to, Google isn’t going to accidentally let you know there’s a climate change scandal raging.
Starts to get a little suspicious, don’t you think?
Now what if I do a google search on ‘climate change’? Wouldn’t you expect to see screeds of articles on the climategate scandal, considering it’s been the most topical and hotly discussed issue with regard to climate change for at least 2 weeks?
Try it. Climategate barely appears. It’s like it never happened. Just a mention here and there. Just enough to give the impression that the pesky, rowdy crowd of deniers haven’t curled up and died yet.
Call me cynical, but all of this reeks of censorship and guidance of public perception. The sort of thing a totalitarian regime would engage in to keep its people in the dark. Oh, wait a minute – didn’t Google agree to do exactly this for China a few years ago? What a co-incidence!
Same thing happened with “The Great Global Warming Swindle” video. When it first came out on YouTube and Google Video, it would barely make it through the night before it was taken down, and then next day, people would put it back up, and Google would take it down again…
My blog has been blacklisted for over a year and a half… no more Google Inqiries into my blog, which is very un-PC, but, I still get hundreds of image searches from mighty Google… just nothing to do with text. Although, I used to get hundreds a day. I haven’t been blogging for over a year and Bing is starting to overtake google in search results/hits. Strange?
I’ve owned shares in Google since the IPO… but, now, I think it’s dirty money.
Mind you, I’d throw Larry and Sergei to the gallows in a heartbeat if it was shown that they were involved in high-level treason like Al Gore is. I’ve got zero sympathy for these globalist asswhipes, plying their billionare morality upon plebes like me. Hang them all.
Just wondering…my aol netscape page has always had the top 5 searches listed on the home page. Two days ago, the top 5 searches no longer appear. Just think it is odd.
Here is the latest tally using Bing vs Yahoo vs Google in searching the word “climategate”
12/29/09 6 PM EST
Typing “clim” Google now does suggest “climategate”
Typing “clima” it suggests climategate or “climate gate”
Using just “Climategate”
Bing 57,400,000 results
Yahoo Search 38,700,000 results
Google 3,690,000 results
Google using “climategate OR “climate gate” 4,760,000 results
Yes, Virginia, There is a Google Scandal in “Hidding the Climategate”