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…
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]