A week or so ago I found out about Google’s +1 program, which allows anybody to uprate websites that participate, so that users can boost that site’s search rankings.
As has been found recently, Google has staff of people who actively downrate websites based on a number of factors, one of which is according to reports, to downgrade sites that don’t agree with the “consensus” about AGW, or which allow for a diversity of views on the topic.
Because of this, WUWT’s google search rankings have become so repressed that you simply can’t find us when searching on terms like “global warming” or “climate change”. See below how search traffic has dropped as Google made changes:
I am hoping that with active reader involvement in the +1 program, we can reverse this trend.
All you have to do is press the “+1” button at the bottom of any article you like (its down there with all the other ‘share’ buttons like twitter and facebook, etc.). Thanks for helping!
UDAPTE: 11/07/2011 345PM PST Some commenters suggest we aren’t being properly skeptical and have no basis for our concern. We do have a reference, this internal Google document:
http://www.chaddo.com/GoogleRatingGuidelines.pdf
and this analysis:
-Anthony
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Question? Can’t the +1 button be moved above the fold? It would make clicking it 10x easier.
I see others do it (yes Dennis Nikols, I gave you some +1’s)
I thought it would have been fairly common knowledge here that Al Gore has a prominent official role with Google. He is a board member or senior advisor or something.
I learned this soon after ClimateGate broke: you could type “climategat” and Google would not auto-complete “climategate.”
News of this tidbit of censorship had gone viral, I thought, after a few days, and the suppression of the regular auto-complete function was discintinued.
Now, as soon as you get to the “g” of climategate, it autocompletes. I am sure “climategate” was searched much more in those days than now.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/02/google-trends-on-climategate-show-public-interest-increasing-but-troubling-questions-loom/
I didn’t get past the first ten pages on either google or bing, but bing was better. Didn’t find WUWT on either of them.
In ‘global warming’ on bing the ‘Great Global Warming Swindle’ was one of the suggestions at the bottom, as was ‘global warming debate’
There seems to be something very awry with the search rules, even the WWF didn’t appear at earliest until the bottom of page 3.
Bing is my default search engine.
Bing is worse. I searched for “global warming” and wattsupwiththat didn’t show up until page 75. Google has a massive conflict of interest. They charge for pay-per-click “adwords” but their search engine is supposed to find the best match for a search.
Similar results here, a google search on “climate change” first WUWT hit was on page 30, and the second WUWT hit was on page 57.
Congratulations Google you have successfully screwed up your algorithm, so completely it is returning the highest rated science blog on a relevant search until long past when normal people would stop paging through the results.
Translation — you have made your search results useless on this topic.
Unfortunately Bing does not do much better first hit on a climate change search for WUWT is page 29, second WUWT hit on page 46.
That said, I think it is important to note something about the listings that rank ahead of those first 2 listings on both search engines. It is obvious by visual examination that google puts a lot of weight on the search key appearing in either the URL or the title of the article cited, and or the first few lines of the first paragraph. It apparently does not weight the tags very significantly.
To rank better in the more generic search keys such as “global warming” “climate change” “green house effect” etc. It would be beneficial if some of those terms were included in article titles or the opening paragraph of articles.
To some extent the low ranking of WUWT on the most generic search keys might be a self inflicted wound due to the conversational, and sometimes “cute” titles given to many submissions.
I think you are being victimized by the very fact that you avoid those sensational “buzz words” which new comers might search for if they have questions about global warming etc.
(no I did not +1 as I will not give actively support google’s data mining of personal information)
Larry
I am another who distrusts Google, and I won’t voluntarily use Google to search. Curiously, the Google + button does not even appear here for me. I think I must have blocked it in my script blocker. Too bad, so sad. I use Dogpile, a search engine aggregater for my searches.
I am sure that Google is actively attempting to hide or discredit legitimate skeptic sites, but I also doubt that playing games of this nature will help much to counter their malfeasance.
I believe that Google suppresses AGW links. On the first page in a search for “global warming” all the links were to orthodox sites except in the category ‘Images for global warming – Report images”. Two of the images linked to neutral or AGW sites (even though the image was polar bear on ice …) I’m guessing this occurred because the censorship code doesn’t search deep enough.
No thanks, I don’t want google to know anything more than they have to as well as I all ready know what they are like there, another propaganda feeding site, so I don’t use thir search engine. I’ll use the old method of passing info on to friends and people I know and via E-Mail, discussion, work, over the phone, or from visiting other like websites with a link like you have here to other sites with the same view. That’s how I found out about your site. Plus it must put a nice taste in the mouths of the camps of the likes of RC, Al Gore and SS.com and the rest of them if the MSM and MS Web search engines directing traffic towards them still cant match the traffic you get here.
I think startpage.com is a good alternative to balance privacy objectives.
https://startpage.com/uk/aboutstartpage/
And how about typing in ‘Watts Up With That’ into Google.
First page, you get a ‘glamour’ site (www.watt-up.com), three websites attacking WUWT in the usual nasty unscientific way and one site sort of on topic:
I thinks this was really impressive on Google’s behalf. So I typed in Real Climate, which was obviously more favourable, but there was one WUWT reference there.
wottsupwiththat.com/ Anthony Watts finds an excuse to make insulting references to a climate scientist. … Thanks madcap paranoid libertarians,
Watts Up With That’s ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
skepticalscience.com/Watts-Up-With-That-ignor.
watts up with that
http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/…/4385
Because it does indeed show what a dangerous place the Internet is for kids like me. Read more: Watts Up With the Internet? Motivated Bias on Climate Skeptic
I like this one as it accuses Anthony of not graduating at university. At least it didn’t accuse his maternal grandmother of having webbed feet.
Correlating Temperature With CO2 | Real Science
stevengoddard.wordpress.com/…/correlating-tem… – Traducir esta página
24 Sep 2010 – … forcing of CO2 as a measurement in defined Watts per square meter prior … “Fools live by omission – the wise live by weighing up everything
It’s all true. I just scroogled “Climate Change” – WUWT at number 383. “Global warming” – 391. “Global warming sceptics” – 113.
FFS, number 200 on the “Global warming” search was a “Global Warming Mug” from the “Unemployed Philosophers Guild” (link deliberately omitted) –
Dare I say that one can see why these “philosophers” are, deservedly, unemployed.
Google are evil. Period. I’m beginning to wonder about even using Scroogle, since that is still giving this biased, lying service a degree of credibility.
I understand the desire to get your fair share of google. But I, like many, if not most, stumbled upon your site via a link from elswhere while trying to find out what the hell was going on with this climate-change thing. Anyone who is concerned with the subject will find you, I guarantee it!
You do not need google, and you do NOT need to play their stupid games.
Don’t do Google in any form, sorry. I’ve even removed it from my computer as a search site. Did it several years ago.
The “+1” button will not probably help much, as for “Global Warming” most of the results include it in the title.
Other SEO techniques would certainly help also. I’ve noticed now, for instance, that you don’t use the keywords metatag. Although discussed if Google really uses it, it is one of the most oldest techniques used in SEO.
Ecotretas
I rather think eyesonu’s “Any recommendations as to another search engine for my normal searching?” is an excellent question that should be considered by all of us who use the internet.
http://scroogle.org/
Um, I’m in the group that got a ‘give us your information and open an account if you want to do this’ nag form from Google….
So what this says is that their priority program will be biased by folks who are naive enough to hand over buckets of personal information to a company that wants to exploit them. Nice simple way to remove thinking skeptical cautious folks from the ranking pool…
So no, I’ll not be hitting the +1 button as I’ll not be feeding Google my information.
BUT, thanks for letting me experience their automated select for the naive filter for myself. Now I KNOW their results will be horribly biased… and why… No one with a healthy sense of privacy and skepticism about corporate morals will ever be in their pool…
If your concerned that Google or just the interweb is stalking you to much try :- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/01/how_to_stay_anonymous/
Hopefully it’s simple to follow if your intrested.
+1ed.
TimM says: November 6, 2011 at 11:39 pm
Thanks Tim – very helpful
You write, “Nobody is rigging search results…”. Unfortunately, Google has announced it definitely demotes Websites for a number of different reasons. Demoting a search engine result is “rigging search results, ” for the purpose of reducing “low quality websites and a variety of other websites as described by Google. Given this overt demoting of website search results, users can be forgiven when they become concerned about just which websites may and may not run afoul of Google’s choices of websites to demote, overtly or covertly.
Google lost a European Union lawsuit in which it was decided that Google demoted or rigged search results leading users to a European search engine competitor. Add to all of that the way in which WUWT has web traffic documented to be very substantially greater than the other websites appearing much earlier in the Google search results, is it any wonder there would be some concern about Google and other major search engines including WUWT among the websites they demote in the search rankings for political reasons represented as other reasons?
Despicable, completely and utterly despicable behaviour from Google. They cornered the market in web search, pretending to be neutral and to have an algorithm which ranks pages based on non-political factors – but now that they are a monopoly on searches, they are showing their true colours. Google is part of the machine. Google is dangerous. Very, Very, dangerous.
You are the pot calling the kettle black here. On your 911 memorial page you banned any comments questioning the official version of events which is so full of holes you could strain your vegetables through it. You don’t like censorship – unless it is you who is doing it!
[REPLY: the WUWT site policy is located here. Read it. Note, too, the section about “grousing about policy”. Further comments along this line will be discarded. -REP]
CE [Google employee] says:
November 6, 2011 at 11:05 pm
“Nobody is rigging search results”
I’m sorry CE but I don’t believe you. Google has been caught out censoring climate searches way back just after Climategate. Why would you stop now?
Please read everything at this link, and get back to WUWT with your response.
http://talkingabouttheweather.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/google-gate/
UK search on google for climate change, after 10 pages gave up looking for WUWT.
With climate sceptic it was on page 2.
I think you need to use “climate change” more !