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
Ah, the Jason Frovich is an expert by Jason Frovich trick.
If a car salesman tells you he’s the most honest car salesman of the year, handing you a diploma of reference signed by himself, would you trust him?
not to reiterate what everyone has said, but it seems internet is just making people more accountable lol… as a teacher I have to be careful of that anyway… so when I first caught on to the google plus… I deleted it… Now, I have this blog… I like to be honest…I wish I could be accountable and keep my public job…but the two don’t mesh well for all case scenarios…hmmm
DavidG said on November 7, 2011 at 5:36 pm:
Going by the previous comments, it’s tied to “Google+”, Google’s “social networking” attempt. If you’re signed up for Google+ then you can vote.
I don’t have the button showing either. Go to the Google Products page. Down in the “Social” section, click on Google+.
I did that. After Google got done checking, it reported Google+ no longer supports my browser, get the latest Chrome, IE, Firefox, or Safari edition.
Having a regular Google account doesn’t matter, I signed in to mine and got nothing for it.
Go to that Products page, see if it doesn’t like your browser either.
Dear Moderators,
Normally I’d just wait it out until the rescue, but I’m curious. What trip-word(s) consigned my last post to the spam bucket?
[Reply: WordPress has its own list of words that automatically place a comment in the Spam folder. One or more links may also do it. WP doesn’t tell us what the words are, but “Nazi” and “fraud” are among them. ~dbs, mod.]
John Eggert says:
November 6, 2011 at 10:11 pm
So did I a couple of years ago (and haven’t used Google since). However, Bing is run by Microsoft, so that’s not a big improvement over Google. I’ve switched to dogpile (no joke)… Try it here: http://www.dogpile.com
It does a fair job and I’m happy to not patronize either Google or Bing.
I don’t know if this will help but I will search WUWT using yahoo and connect via that route rather than using google bookmarks.
It has been stated above that many of us here have WUWT bookmarked and get here that way. It looks like WUWT will cross the ONE MILLION (1,000,000) hit mark by the new year (2012). That is due ‘kudos’ by any measure for a blog of this nature, and in about 4 years time (hope I got the time right)!
Congratulations Anthony and crew!
Has it occurred to anybody that the same business ethics that landed Microsoft in the hot water of Anti-Trust might be inflating their search results counter by 5x just to impress those who are easily impressed by big numbers. Well has it?
“downgrade sites that don’t agree with the consensus” Wow, given the very powerful natural monopoly that Google enjoys and the resulting influence it has over people, this is extremely disturbing and is my worst fear.
I don’t really “get” Google +1. -Mark http://www.meetmarkweber.com
I would love to support the idea but can’t support Google. I visit this site everyday and I would think that statistically that should be significant ….. 🙂
WUWT first showed up on page 11 of my Bing search. Maybe if you put “Climate” in the name of the blog it would rise. Climate Audit is up pretty high.
I see Google has decided to succumb to ‘being evil’. Pity that. Perhaps that’s what comes with having Al Gore as a member of the board of directors.
Terrible search results for ‘global warming skeptics’ which includes SS.com. Nothing on wattsupwiththat or ClimateAudit.
For a smoking gun the Google document doesn’t add much to the case. Firstly if Google wanted to intentionally rank WUWT lower it could do so using less complicated means than the kind of QA process described – remember THEY control their own code, their own algorithms.
Secondly so far nobody has shown that there is anything remotely odd about WUWT ranking in a search. The underlying algorithm counts linkages – ranks aren’t on straight popularity but on the extent other websites link to a site (and then those links are weighted by the ranking of that site and so on).
Think about, say, The Guardian. Is it more likely that the Guradian would have an article linking to WUWT or is the opposite more likely to be the case? Clealry it is far more likely WUWT will have a blog post linking to an article in a major news site. Consequently WUWT is the sort of site that links more to other places than a site that major websites link to. Naturally it will have substantially lower ranking.
As I explained above – just select BLOGS on the side bar of a Google search result. WUWT will then have a high page ranking because major news sites and government agencies (such as the EPA) won’t be included.
From NyqOnly on November 8, 2011 at 12:51 am
Outdated info. I found this article (merely one I still have up, echoes many others like they’re all parroting a press release) about Google’s recent changes to weed out “low quality” sites, contains this info:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/technology/internet/26google.html?_r=2
Google has learned to largely ignore links, as people figured out how to use them to game the system, and has found other metrics to provide what they find to be better results.
Using a common SEO tool (SEOQuake) to analyze both WUWT and SkS home pages, an obvious problem shows up that may be affecting the organic page ranking of WUWT: the actual keyword phrase of ‘global warming.’
The SkS site has the keyword phrases “global warming” and “global warming skepticism” identified multiple repeat times by SEOQuake. For WUWT? Zero identified by SEOQuake.
This is an SEO issue for the WUWT and best remedied by utilizing an SEO expert to help with the site’s organic rankings.
Once the obvious keyword problem is corrected, the WUWT site should naturally rank ahead of SkS simply due to huge number of external links to WUWT site (WUWT has 555k ‘backlinks’ to its site, SkS only has a measly 6k). Of course, if your site still ranks well below SkS after fixing the keyword issue then Google has some real ‘splainin to do.
SEO comparisons for two sites here: http://www.c3headlines.com/miscellaneous-chartsgraphs.html
Now, only two days later, they have fallen to page 31 for “climate change”.
I don’t understand, why would you support Google’s +1 program when they are hurting your site? That’s like rewarding a destructive child with ice cream.
I’m grateful to CE for his assurance.
I use Gmail, Google for search, Google documents, Google maps, and (very frequently) Google news. I love the cpmpany. They’ve given me what I regard as thousands of dollars worth of value, for free.
I’m sorry so many people here have expressed dislike for the company. I want to speak in its favour.
If Google’s algorithms are failing to highly rank a site as keenly sought and significant as WUWT, in the topics that WUWT addresses, then it’s utterly astonishing, and it reflects badly on those algorithms. I’m conscious that I appear to be a hypocrite when I propose that putting WUWT down the ranking is a bad thing but putting it up the ranking is a good thing. I don’t think I am hypocritical; an algorithm tweak that correctly identifies the relevance of this site to the topics it addresses would undoubtedly be useful for other sites on other issues. And of course for giving me what I am searching for.
“Outdated info. I found this article (merely one I still have up, echoes many others like they’re all parroting a press release) about Google’s recent changes to weed out “low quality” sites, contains this info:”
My point was that without intentional adjustments we would still expect WUWT to rank low on generic search terms like “climate change”. Does Google use more than just links? Yes – but nothing that would suggest that WUWT would rank higher. The objection seems to be, on deeper analysis, not that WUWT is intentionally ranked lower than it should be (should be compared with what?) but that Google aren’t adjusting it higher.
“f Google’s algorithms are failing to highly rank a site as keenly sought and significant as WUWT, in the topics that WUWT addresses, then it’s utterly astonishing, and it reflects badly on those algorithms.”
Keenly sought? Somebody actually looking for WUWT will find it very quickly with Google. A search term like “Anthony Watts” takes you straight to WUWT (as does “antony watts”).
The issue appears to be whether people typing ina generic search term are directed to WUWT. As yet nobody has given a reason why WUWT should rank highly for such terms.
NyqOnly,
I think it’s great that you think Google is great. I use Google, because the results always seem to be more useful than any other product. I also use gmail. But….I assume that Google is doing what I would consider bad things with my email. This is the Google that refused to cooperate with the FBI on tracking down kiddie porn searchers, but had no problem helping China keep track of who googles ‘democracy’. I use their products, but, make no mistake, they are evil, evil people. To assume that they are ‘doing the right thing’ displays an incredible degree of trust in an organization pretty obviously not trustworthy.
Seems an investigation into this matter is in order. Is this censorship in process?
Any investigative journalists out there?
How can a web site voted “Best Science Blog” and with large traffic be wiped from the world’s number one search engine’s results of a company running the largest search engine without members of the board of directors and management of that said company, “Google” corporation, be aware, or forbid, even ordering, such distortion in “the world’s information” as Google itself terms it’s control over said “world’s information”. Conflict-of-interest has been said to exist within it’s board of directors who can so easily manipulate such control over thoughts and markets.
It is clear by looking at the results from the front pages that that results are being replaced with pages from sites of opposing views and a small fraction of the traffic. Something does seem amiss.
I just think someone should look deeper into this, not merely pushing Google’s own “+1” button. As a commentator above correctly pointed out, that this is everyone’s “worst nightmare” if we let it occur. Silence of a minority is bad of coarse but the silencing of the majority can never be tolerated.
Google is what it is.
On the other hand G.E. is up to no good total 24/7.
Darn eyes! Wrong word in top line (but correctly spelled 🙂 ) Try ‘progress’, not ‘process’.
Dear Anthony,
I am shocked by this revelation. As a consequence, I have changed the default search engine for all of the computers in my reach to Bing. I am promoting this change at my office, colleagues, wherever I can. So far with good results.