Claims that Google Search improperly downranks some websites are frequent but not always correct, and they’re hard to prove even if they are. But the latest available (May 2017) Google Search Quality Evaluation General Guidelines provide conclusive proof of intentional, severe, and malicious suppression of climate realist views. A quote:
“High quality information pages on scientific topics should represent well established scientific consensus on issues where such consensus exists.” (Section 3.2)
But the allegations of “scientific consensus” are made only in one field – climate alarmism! “Scientific consensus” is almost an oxymoron. Consensus is a decision-making method used outside of science. This language is inserted in the guidelines with only one purpose – to eliminate climate realism websites from the results, shown to Google Search users. This discrimination is exacerbated by classifying “news about important topics such as international events, business, politics, science, and technology;” as Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) Pages, for which Google claims to have especially high quality standards. Classification of news as Your Money or Your Life Pages (which includes medical, legal, financial, and safety advice) is obviously intended to suppress political information that differs from the opinions of the leftstream media and Wikipedia, which Google considers the guardians of truth. That is why WUWT and other climate realism websites are so well hidden by Google Search.
I anticipate some readers will defend this behavior as an exercise of freedom of speech. But this is a clear case of fraud (or worse), not speech. Google Search is a technical system for finding information on the Internet, just like a computer network with modem-routers and operated by an ISP is a technical system for accessing that information. At least this is how Google positioned and advertised Google Search. And this is what the majority of Google users believe they get when they use it. Google repeatedly denied subjectivity and editorial discretion in assigning page ranking and producing search results. This is in contrast with many specialized search engines, including my Non-Fake Media Web Search and Climate Realism Search.
Just like every other corporation, Google owes customers and prospective customers an accurate description of the services it offers. Misrepresentation is a fraud. It is time for state attorneys to investigate Google. It also seems that every Google user in the U.S. is entitled to sue for damages caused by this fraud.
Google’s actions have likely violated many other laws. Deceitful and malicious promotion of websites, defaming or inciting hatred against scientists who testified in official proceedings against interests of climate alarmism governance is an example. This might qualify as witness tampering or retaliation.
———————
The Guidelines require a reviewer to evaluate Reputation, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and/or Trustworthiness (FEAT) of web pages. The recommended sources of the information confirm that a strong leftist bias of Google Search is by design. Incredibly, the Guidelines require the reviewers to use Wikipedia as the main source of information to evaluate FEAT of the web pages! In its best days, anybody could write in Wikipedia whatever they wanted. But now Wikipedia is controlled and ruled with an iron fist (in a velvet glove) by the leftist Wikimedia Foundation. Other sources that Google recommends as reliable are The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, and Snopes.
The word consensus appears 18 times in both the current (May 2017) and the previous (March 2017) versions of the Guidelines. It was not used in the March 2016 version at all. Here are a few examples from the current version (red highlighting is mine):
“For news articles and information pages, high quality MC [MC – Main Content] must be factually accurate for the topic and must be supported by expert consensus where such consensus exists.” (Section 4.2)
“… high quality news articles and information pages on scientific topics should represent established scientific consensus where such consensus exists.” (Section 4.5)
“… for news articles and information pages on YMYL topics, there is a high standard for accuracy and well established medical/scientific/historical consensus where such consensus exists.” (Section 5.1)
“Some topics demand expertise for the content to be considered trustworthy. YMYL topics such as medical advice, legal advice, financial advice, etc. should come from authoritative sources in those fields, must be factually accurate, and must represent scientific/medical consensus within those fields where such consensus exists.” (Section 6.5)
“Before using the Fully Meets [user’s needs] rating for queries seeking a very specific fact or piece of information, you must check for accuracy and confirm that the information is supported by expert consensus where such consensus exists.” (Section 13.2)
“All of the following should be considered either lowest quality MC or no MC [MC – Main Content]:
- No helpful MC at all or so little MC that the page effectively has no MC.
- MC which consists almost entirely of “keyword stuffing.”
- Gibberish or meaningless MC.
- “Autogenerated” MC, or MC which was otherwise created with little to no time, effort, expertise, manual curation, or added value for users.
- Misleading or inaccurate informational content about YMYL topics.
- Pages or websites which appear to be deliberate attempts to misinform or deceive users by presenting factually inaccurate content.
- Pages or websites with factually inaccurate content which may harm or deceive users, regardless of their purpose or intent.
- MC which consists almost entirely of content copied from another source with little time, effort, expertise, manual curation, or added value for users.
Pages with lowest quality MC should be rated Lowest.” (Section 7.4)
Thus, pages containing what Google considers inaccurate content are rated as the lowest quality pages, “regardless their purpose or intent,” and regardless whether the allegedly inaccurate content does supposedly harm or just supposedly deceive the users! Given Google’s opinion in the climate debate, most pages on this website have no content at all. I guess, the same logic applies to the pages that “deceive” the viewers to vote for Republicans.
There are also references to additional documents, not included in the Guidelines and not available to the public: “Website Reputation : Links to help with reputation research will be provided.”
Also, the Google policies reflected in the Guidelines create vicious informational spirals. Google endorses leftstream media content. Then the reporters and editors of that media use Google and see results that confirm and amplify their biases, and so on. The YMYL policies have the effect of decreasing political diversity and increasing political uniformity. Even if the manual reviews according to these Guidelines do not directly impact the ranking of websites, the Guidelines reflect the principles and aims of Google Search.
Google consumes as much or more energy as the entire city San Francisco, and falsely claims that 100% of it is renewable energy. Remember last year’s headlines like Google Says It Will Run Entirely on Renewable Energy in 2017 (NY Times) and Google to be powered 100% by renewable energy from 2017 (The Guardian)? Now Google claims it has achieved that goal. Of course, this is a lie – Google gets electricity from the grid, and the energy it consumes is generated from the local mix of coal, natural gas, nuclear, and some hydro-power. But it pays “renewable energy” ventures, in some of which Al Gore and his buddies are investors, and calls this operation “energy purchase.” It looks to me more like a fraud, possibly even a bribe. Well, Google management might think it buys virtual energy.
Google directly sponsors Inside Climate News, which is a part of the Rockefeller Brothers/Family Fund’s attempt to shut down U.S. energy industries!. Google’s Eric Schmidt also supports climate alarmism with pre-tax money through his “charitable” foundation.
Google (Alphabet) pays income tax at the effective rate 19%, instead of 41% combined federal and California tax rate it is supposed to pay.
By the way, even the famous Google’s motto “Don’t be evil” is evil. It suggests that most other businesses are evil, which is false.
Disclosure: I hold short positions in GOOG.
I’ve been preoccupied of late, haven’t been paying much attention to email. Got back to it last night, and found all Watts Up With That email had been steered into my Spam folder.
Vic read this, might be the issue.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/21/some-quick-housekeeping/
He is not saying his posts are getting binned on WUWT, he is saying email from WUWT is getting classed as spam, though he does not have the wit to say what email service he is using. That lack of awareness probably suggests he is using gmail and thinks that email == gmail.
It also suggests he was foolish enough to tick one of the “notify” options, this is guaranteed to bring in lots of email with similar looking subject headers.
Many automatic or “heuristic” spam filters start blocking anything which has more that a few emails with similar headers. This is the main reason why I tell my ISP to butt-out and let me define my own filters.
If you get into and exchange on a thread on just about any blog you will end up with a rapid fire of msgs with the same subject header. This will typically trigger an automatic spam filter after about five msgs.
Just posted a response by also binned.
Reply: Yeah, something weird is happening. Working on figuring it out~ctm
What is different about Leo Goldstien thinking his opinion is absolute truth ie. “realist” and someone else thinking he and his ilk are wrong ??
Speaking of Twitter: it was caught shadow banning (i.e., making hist tweets invisible to other users without notice to anybody affected) our friend Scott Adams, and other public persons whose politics it does not like.
Interesting. I use Google Mail exclusively and rarely check the spam folder. But I did last fall and all the Donald Trump/Republican solicitation/news had been funneled there
Google is a free service offered by an otherwise private company (publicly traded is not the same as owned by the public). There is no case for either fraud or censorship. If you don’t like what they offer, don’t use it. I stopped trusting Google for anything controversial long ago for the same reasons I stopped trusting Wikipedia for anything controversial. There is a legitimate reason to point their hypocrisy out, but please, stop the hyperbole.
If I have a business selling widgets and the widgets are not as advertised, people can and do sue. Not providing the service or product as promised is fraud. I cannot sell you a table and call it a chair. One should not be able to advertise as a free search engine when their primary purpose is not as a search engine. Google is nothing more than a marketing scheme. It does not provide information, it SELLS things. It is not a search engine, it’s a sales product designed to steer buyers to certain sellers.
I’m curious how far off one should be allowed to bend the language and exploit the system before it’s criminal. Are you for complete freedom of marketers to rename their products whatever they want and sell them under the misleading term? Can one sell a cat by calling it a mountain lion? Can a private business on the internet do this? After all, a cat and a mountain lion are both feline and it’s a private business. The cat is very, very close to being a mountain lion. It’s just a teensy weensy misdirection.
“Google is nothing more than a marketing scheme. It does not provide information, it SELLS things.”
Wrong. Are TV shows supported by ad sales a marketing scheme? Of course not. What something is (a product or service, etc) is entirely different from how it is monetized. I can use google to look up currency exchange rates, translate a phrase from English to Dutch, or find an article on a sports team, and no product is sold, and no money flows to Google. Only when I (or someone else) clicks on ad sponsored link does Google make money.
I read that it does not matter if you click on the ad, the mere act of going to the page also counts. That’s why sites are furious with ad blockers. They lose the revenue they got from people clicking open the page. One does not need to click on the ad. I sould guess clicking leads to higher revenue, but some money is made just by you opening the page.
Google provides information as a side to the marketing. As for TV, yes, TV shows supported by ads exist as part of marketing by companies. The companies dictate what is on TV and what is not. Pull all the advertising, the show dies. They are 100% entwined. Cable, internet, PBS are all vehicles for advertising. Blocking ads is considered “stealing” from the website by many website owners. Fast-forwarding through recorded programming is considered “stealing” by the networks. I cannot see how you can separate the two.
I can watch “educational TV” and learn things, yes, but marketing and TV are one.
Actually, “Google is nothing more than a marketing scheme. It does not provide information, it SELLS things.” is a reasonable statement. cf commercial TV whose primary purpose is delivering customers to paying advertisers rather than providing their customers with entertainment or information. The entertainment or information is just a means to an end – customers don’t pay for it. It’s the advertising that gets paid for. Advertising is the primary product, for both commercial TV and Google.
“I read that it does not matter if you click on the ad, the mere act of going to the page also counts.”
So who is paying for your click in that instance? Say I have a business called Joe’s BBQ. If I put up a web site it will get indexed by Google, which means it will appear when someone does a search – say on the terms joe’s bbq. It might not be on the first page, but it will be there somewhere. I haven’t agreed to pay Google any money, so clearly there is no way that Google can collect from me if someone clicks on my web site. So it is not true that a click on any link on Google leads to a payment to them.
“Actually, “Google is nothing more than a marketing scheme. It does not provide information, it SELLS things.” is a reasonable statement. cf commercial TV whose primary purpose is delivering customers to paying advertisers rather than providing their customers with entertainment or information.”
Nope. HBO creates the exact same content, the way they make money is by subscription. So there are different business models people or companies who create content. Advertising is the most common one, but certainly not the only one.
Yes, TV programs are a marketing scheme. They sell entertainment to get eyeballs, then they sell those eyeballs to advertisers.
The bottom line is that Google is the world’s most used search engine and trust IS placed in them by hundreds of millions of people, and whether that trust is misplaced or not, they have a lawfully binding duty to give their customers what they believe to be getting, not what Google thinks they should be getting whether they wanted it or not.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/google-fined-e2-42bn-for-eu-antitrust-violations-over-shopping-searches/
Citing the socialist EU fining a US company hardly supports any case you think you are making.
When I use google, I’m not a customer, since I don’t pay. Advertisers who pay for ads and page promotion are the customers. If they believe google’s policies are fraudulent, they have to bring the charge. If wuwt were paying for page promotion, say, and wuwt was never showing up before search result hit#100, there’d be a case I suppose. For you and me, no. Try bing or another search engine.
Mark T
Hyperbole?
When an organization – be it a company or government agencies – put in place systemic means of filtering / blocking certain types of information or sources of information, its called censorship. Period.
Both Wiki an Google – just like the for instance the Chinese government – are guilty of doing precisely that.
That you have moved on and found other ways of accessing information does not make that any less of am objectionable reality.
Then don’t use their service. The solution is simple. They have no power over you. Your whine is even more hyperbole.
Censorship has a very specific meaning — government suppression. Private suppression is not and should not be illegal, distasteful as it is.
i don’t know about hyperbole but i always make a point of doing a google search for wuwt rather than coming straight to the site from favourites or desk top icon.(just to annoy any alarmists that work in their search stats dept :)) and up until last week the top results would always sites parodying wuwt or alarmist sites apparently “debunking” wuwt.
it changed big time last week ,at least for here in scotland. now wuwt is the top result and various sceptic topics related to wuwt appear in the list below.
The problem is that Google, Twitter, Facebook and their ilk all have first mover advantage.
We should pass laws for any social media company whose audience exceeds 10% of the American public, to come under utility type laws. Or anti-trust laws.
Where if they want to ban someone, that person at least has the right of appeal, the right of knowing specific accusations, complaints etc, and the ability to recover. Permanent banning should be, well, banned. Only on social media do you get the “death penalty” for wrong-speak.
That must end.
The abuse of conservatives by Twitter, Facebook and others is well known and well documented. Probably far, far more is happening behind the scenes that we do not know about.
Sometimes government intervention is called for. This is one of those times.
There was a proposal to do just that, except with the internet bandwidth providers under the Orwellian rubric of “net neutrality”. The actual proposal was to use Section 2 of the 1936 law establishing the Federal Communications Commission. Remember Ma Bell (if you are in the US)? High prices, bad service, and stagnant technology, but a cash cow for the politicians.
Regulation was something that proved to be a bad idea for the customers.
Nonsense. There is no reason to use the government to bully a private company into behaving the way you think they should behave. Tyrannies do that, not free societies.
Absolutely not. Government is never ever ever ever ever ever ever the proper response to private suppression like google’s. Getting that tiger back in the cage is near impossible; it can and will eat your freedom.
“The abuse of conservatives by Twitter, Facebook and others is well known and well documented. Probably far, far more is happening behind the scenes that we do not know about.”
Nonsense, one of the main ways that Trump won the Presidency is the volume of misleading or outright fake news stories that utilized Facebook to spread the word.
Just WOW!
If I remember correctly, most schools don’t accept Wikipedia as a valid source for school papers.
Exactly.
Remember when editorializing was considered a bad thing?
Please use English! ” editorialising” is not English. Editing is. If you cannot understand English please go back to school.
The Merriam Webster dictionary says it is.
One wonders just what “English” you are referring to?
As Sheri points out, ‘Merriam-Webster’:
defines “editorializing” as:
“Definition of editorialize
editorialized; editorializing
intransitive verb
1: to express an opinion in the form of an editorial
2: to introduce opinion into the reporting of facts
3: to express an opinion (as on a controversial issue)”
Google is editorializing by action.
One also notes that “Roger’s” suggested alternative, “editing”, is not remotely similar in meaning.
What was that about “If you cannot understand English please go back to school”?
Roger, editing is correcting mistakes. Editorializing is expressing an opinion using selected facts as an argument.
Wikipedia and Sheri say it’s ok. And Sheri has a mountain lion!
Roger The Cambridge dictionary provides both UK and US pronunciation for editorialize.
Along with other dictionaries
Try to come up to speed on the facts of Interenational English.
Roger, I think it is you who needs to go back to school and take some English lessons again. Also, perhaps a lesson in manners wouldn’t do you any harm
to Rager on July 22 at 9:28am
You need to go back to school too:
charm school !
Maybe editorializing is not a word,
but we all knew what it meant.
You did too, but just had to make trouble.
You should go to climate change believers websites and pick on their grammar too.
I have written an economics newsletter since 1977.
Every issue had at least one grammer or typographacal errror.
That is because I was edumacated in pubic schools.
My errors are usually close enough so paid subscribers knew what I meant.
No one is perfect.
I leave them in because the wife loves to find them and point them out.
Why proofread when findings errors give the wife so much pleasure?
You’re probably not the same Roger I knew in 1969, but if you are, you haven’t learned much, have you?
This “Roger” isn’t me!
(My corrections are correct. And not impolite. And not addressed to commenters—they only point out typos in head posts, whose authors might want to correct them, either now or for future re-use.)
Ssh dear. They are talking ‘Murrican’ where you dont burgle houses, you burglarise them.
“Editorializing” is the act of placing ones opinion in the editorial pages of a paper or other media. It has been common usage for years! It has no relation whatsoever to editing.
I say (tongue firmly in cheek) “Learn English if you are going to criticize!”
We do not have an Academe Francaise for English and one of our language’s strengths is it ability to create new words for concepts that did not exist for its Anglo-Saxon or French forebearers.
“Reputation, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and/or Trustworthiness (FEAT) of web pages.”
Why not say “Authority” and “Trust”? And how does “reputation: start with an “F”?
Schools taught us the ABC of writing, Accuracy, Brevity, Clarity. Which I have many times since seen as “Accuracy, Briefness and Clearness.”
Geoff.
I don’t think an apology is forthcoming, is it, Roger July 22, 2017 at 9:28 am?
What the…
In my estimation, Roger used anonymity ( does not care if he appears stupid ) to redirect the discussion away from the gist of my post. He succeeded. Nice work, Roger.
“Other sources that Google recommends as reliable are The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, and Snopes.”
That’s enough for me. The fake news industry is on a roll.
When the “network of networks” began…was there anyone that didn’t think it would lead to collective thought?
…..and then rush to put everyone’s information on it…..when it’s not advanced enough to not get hacked
Just did a quick search on google using …….climate science forums…..the usual suspects all showed up….went as far as page 10 and WUWT still did not show up…..even though WUWT has thousands more hits and comments than the suspects
Tried it again using……climate science discussion……The usual suspects were on page one……WUWT showed up on page 4
..is Google biased……absolutely…..using their own criteria…..WUWT should have been the first hit
The internet is a majority rule sort of “library”.
Just like Wikipedia is a majority rule “encyclopedia”
If you want opinions that are in the minority,
your search words have to be chosen carefully.
It seems logical that searches would normally be steered to majority opinions.
I like the search terms: “Climate Change Skeptics Websites”
The science consensus / majority always resists change.
Progress in science is usually from proving the consensus wrong.
I did a similar search for “climate science blogs” and Joe Romm’s ‘Top Ten Climate Change Blogs – Think Progress’ came up as the third one listed by Google. What’s even funnier is his list:
10. Accuweather Climate Blog
9. Climate Feedback
7. It’s Getting Hot In Here
6. Climate Progress
5. Climate Ark
4. DeSmogBlog
3. Celsias
2. A Few Things Ill Considered
1. RealClimate
Talk about misinformation/bias… the Think Progress article probably should have been located below the bottom of the first page on Google’s search and to be honest, Joe should have named it “My Favorite Top Ten Climate Science Blogs”. I’d bet if you add up the total hits for all ten on his list it would not even come close to WUWT’s hits.
Oops… screwed up the turning off ‘bold’
It’s possible that the WUWT website header info doesn’t contain the metadata tags.
If you google search for “most popular climate websites” without the quotes WUWT is on the 1st page of results.
Try news.google.com and enter a search like climate change news wattsupwiththat <– lots of results…
latitude see my post up thread as i have noticed a big change recently in wuwt related search results when using google uk.
Latitude and Mods,
I did the same searches several different ways on several WUWT pages and find the reason WUWT doesn’t show up more frequently with searches is because of the WUWT site configuration NOT Google’s and other web Crawlers.
I have no idea why anyone would search for Climate Realist as it isn’t commonly used; most curious aspect of this post.
Common terms: Alarmist(s), Skeptic(s), Lukewarmer(s), etc.
So, I simply searched for Climate Change Skeptic. This appears to be a very common search and guess which site comes up 1st and why.
Method:
Used Firefox 34.0.5 and hit several pages of WUWT and the SS site with page info analysis. Note: Firefox shows a complete index of WUWT NOT page views and doesn’t recognize a valid certificate.
The SS site uses head meta keywords “global warming, skeptics, skepticism, climate change, CO2 emmissions”
The WUWT page info both front page and subsequent pages do not define any page keywords exposed to the web crawlers.
Wordpress plugins are available to manage the meta keywords and negotiate this site with Google News. Use them and stop blaming Google for very bad site configuration.
Google is not censoring WUWT info, You Are!
I tried google, bing, and firefox (yahoosearch) for “most popular climate websites.” WUWT did come up on the first page–after lists of alarmist sites. WUWT was 8th on googlesearch, 10th on bing or ie, and 4th on firefox (yahoosearch.) At least on my computer. Past search history may give different results for different individuals.
Richard Greene wrote, “…like Wikipedia is a majority rule “encyclopedia””
No, it isn’t. Wikipedia is led by a “Czar,” named Jimbo Wales, who is a leftist, with his thumb on the scale.
He ensures that day-to-day editorial control of Wikipedia is held by a cadre of overwhelmingly leftist “administrators,” like Green Party activist William Connolley, who have special editing powers with names like “autopatrol,” “review,” and “rollback,” and who relentlessly enforce their bias in climate-related articles (and virtually all topics with a left-right spectrum of opinion).
Here’s a tiny example. Connolley inserted sneer quotes around the word skeptics, and deleted the word “leading” (to reflect his POV that climate skepticism is illegitimate), to denigrate Myron Ebell, Chris Monckton, and other skeptics. It was an example of a minor but blatant & customary defiance of official Wikipedia policy. (That just happens to be the first example that I found when I looked at his edits 4.5 years ago.)
Here are a few more links:
1. http://archive.is/ZfIyr
2. https://spectator.org/40334_wikipedia-meets-its-own-climategate/
3. http://www.webcitation.org/5y5tWpEov
BTW, Jimbo Wales loves Wm Connolley.
@Joe Crawford
My google.co.uk puts WUWT on page 1 just behind in order:
The Deplorable Climate Science Blog
climatescience.blogspot.com
SkS
Climate Change: Earth Right Now Blog
I’ve ignored a couple of sites which were “Top 10” type of blogs, although how the hell SkS ranks above WUWT is anybody’s guess.
Excellent point!
Use DuckDuckGo as a search engine (apps available for tablets/ phones). Doesn’t track you or descriminate. I’ve used it for a couple of years with great results and along with the Ghostery Safari extension, my browsing life is much happier.
Doesn’t find what I’m looking for either. It is very limited in my experience. I end up back on Bing or Google or Info.
Maybe you should just use yahoo.
Are you serious? The yahoo homepage is news for idiots and is nothing but fake news central.
Afraid you’re right, Matthew. I use it for stock information M-F, but every once in a while hit an ultra-socialist site instead.
Makes me just want to download the stock prices of interest, and ignore all the related articles. Many of them are just incredibly, over the top, stupid. Economists, climate scientists, and astrologers. Lots of models, little common sense.
Still remember in the 80’s (1987?) reading an article about a poll of economists and stock brokers about where the economy was going. 33% said up, 33% said down, 33% said no change, and 1% had no opinion. I’d never seen that kind of a poll before.
By the way, 34% were right.
LMAO. Good one RS.
Sorry, I have found that Yahoo does not even read the request you made , for, just pushes advertising on every word in the search request
Yahoo uses the Bing search engine to power searches
Careful what we wish for, if your young daughter goes looking for dating advice, you would hope p0rn sites would not be ranked #1. Yes skeptical views are not ranked #1 on searches, neither is Sierra Club. With that said, Google does need to walk carefully with their Social Contract to the world.
I switched off google for these reasons. I use DuckduckGo for search. It works well, doesn’t sell your info or collect loads of data from you on your searches, etc. I used the subterfuge of searching for a variety of things to confuse googles efforts to select ads for me on web pages until I learned to turn off these ‘viruses’. I only turn on my GPS function when I have a need for it. I treat Google like I treat Wikipedia, as a lefty intruder. I had to open a Google account and email for my android phone but I never use it. I even downloaded language stuff from other sites and I don’t use their voice texting or other functions. Even then, I’m not totally free of this sticky designer-brained tool.
Gary
I’ve had it suggested that if you want to stir Google’s possum you use Google to find DuckDuckGo to use it
I just used DuckDuckGo to search for most popular climate website and this is what showed up.
1. world.org
2. carbonliteracy
3. treehugger.com
4. ebizmba.com
5. thehill.com
6. desmogblog.com
7. businessinsider.com
8. mostpopularwebsites.net
9. bestsearches.com
10. wattsupwiththat.com
Number 10 on the list is the only one of these sites listed that I have visited.
“But the allegations of “scientific consensus” are made only in one field – climate alarmism!”
This is not correct IMO, there are many other consensus that many here would agree with, smoking is bad, vaccines are good, nutrition, etc. Any one of these subjects have opposing views, just not in the majority.
These are examples of consensus, not a 97% scientific consensus. No one ever bothered to fake numbers there.
CG, then the real issue is science fakery which is driving the ‘consensus’, not Google’s algorithm’s which are used for all responsible searches. No doubt Google is full of believers in AGW but this article, Google caught “Red-Handed” is a little over the top and leaves out many of the reasons why it is responsible for Google to do this. For me it boarders into the tin-foil-hat range. They don’t block websites to my knowledge. My two cents.
Second hand smoke studies and EPA evaluation of them has been shown to be fairly dubious.
Thanks, CG. I was going to mention that there are many areas of science use consensus to limit discussion. But you are right – they don’t fake numbers. They just rely on the preponderance of research. Not saying that they’re right, but it means they can pivot without losing face when data/research reaches a tipping point.
Versus Climate Science, which relies on the 97% stat to stay in business irrespective of actual data.
I’ve heard of anti-vacc, but I’ve never heard of anyone pushing a vaccine ‘consensus’. The same goes for any scientific disagreement I’ve heard of. When have you ever read someone arguing that there’s a Dark Matter consensus, or a Extinction Cause consensus?
Sure, there are plenty of consensuses in science, but no one but the Climate Faithful think that shouting ‘Consensus!’ counts as an legitimate argument.
~¿~
“I’ve never heard of anyone pushing a vaccine ‘consensus’. ”
See this:
Highlighting consensus among medical scientists increases public support for vaccines: evidence from a randomized experiment
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4669673/
Duncan, but not a whole science like climate. Yeah, medicine knows what to do when you break a leg and sundry other health matters, but there is no consensus on what to do to cure aids or cancer. Nutrition is also a poor analogy.
Gary, I don’t think Nutrition is a bad example, it is a ‘soft’ science, there is not one size fits all answer. But there is a consensus that the human body needs certain amounts of nutrients to be healthy. How this is accomplished could be debated.
Getting back to this post specifically, if you Google “nutrition”, Google provides responsible first picks for most people based on their algorithms, not “Coca-Cola cures impotence”.
Yes…the ‘consensus’ on nutrition changes about every 10 years or less.
“the ‘consensus’ on nutrition changes about every 10 years or less.” – Agreed but usually for the better as our data gathering and understanding improves.
In the case of Climate Science, usually for the worst.
“but there is no consensus on what to do to cure aids or cancer.”
Gary this was not my example, just because they cannot cure aids or cancer does not mean there is not a consensus on how the disease starts or how to help prevent it (condoms) as two examples.
Duncan,
Your argument is correct, but Google’s normal algorithm should properly discriminate against fringe views. They use eigen vectors to rank websites I believe. Problem for the consensus on CAGW is that there are lots of websites with lots of hits that would be near the top of the search results.
Doug,
Don’t get me wrong, I do believe Google is self-serving (money), I am not defending them as a whole, just that them having a socially responsible search engine algorithm does not make them anti-science in the context of AGW. We just don’t like the results.
“should properly discriminate against fringe views.”- How would you do this? Any idea’s?
“Properly discriminating” is still discriminating. We’ll only lock-up one in ten people, ‘see’ we are not discriminating because we are being equally fair to everyone.
Woa! Saying that “…Google’s normal algorithm should properly discriminate against fringe views” is the same as saying they should act as the world’s “cesor”.
Joe, gross conceptual error. I may have been unclear. I was not making a statement about how the search engine should work. The use of eigen vectors means that sites with more hits and importantly more cross references from other sites will be near the top.
Fringe views almost by definition will not have many hits or many cross references. And if they do, maybe they are not fringe views.
http://www.math.cornell.edu/~mec/Winter2009/RalucaRemus/Lecture3/lecture3.html
Doug I understood your meaning, the hard part is implementation. Any search engine, Google, Bing, Yahoo end up having to priorities any search result, all of them discriminate in a sense. I have been arguing above (not with you), Google is no different, they will run their business in the most responsible/relevant/useful way to attract the most users/views (money). There is no “red-handed” smoking gun. In time WUWT might be #1
G’day – Duncan
Marq, I would suggest everything the EPA does has a zero tolerance approach, no surprise there. I am sure they would ban cooking marshmallows on a camp fire if they could (sugar and smoke oh my). It is a Scope issue and why the CO2 endangerment finding is so dangerous (over-reach).
Watch people shift the goal posts.
the author was wrong.
Very Good of you to point it out.
However,
you are not allowed to criticize posts that are critical of consensus.
hence, other commenters WILL come and defend a mistake with all manner of excuses.
lack of principles
Steven, While I don’t believe Google has a conspiracy going against Skeptics, as someone correctly pointed out above, I cannot think of any other area of Science where the Consensus is used as an argument in place of facts. Watching any documentary, it does not start out saying all Scientists agree on X subject matter – end of documentary. While I believe there is consensus in other sciences (some would argue otherwise), in context, it is correct to be weary of the 97% argument. It has proven to be a dubious number and in place of facts, its usage is an appeal to authority purposely hiding the many inconsistencies/knowledge-gaps in Climate Science.
Duncan,
It is sad – and very dangerous – to see Google following the Wikipedia path of distortion.
What other search engines exist that would be more neutral in their efforts?
Bing
DuckduckGo – goofy name but a great non-partisan search engine that doesn’t choose ‘personalized’ ads for you or collect data on your habits, products you buy, etc see my post a few posts above this one.
“The company name originates from the children’s game duck, duck, goose.” > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo
Now I know
“The search engine is written in Perl”
ARRRGGGHHH!!!
I use http://www.DuckDuckgo.com. They are impartial, fast, and don’t track you. Lately, I have been experiencing major problems with Google Maps for directions as well. It will suddenly make a major change in the routing and take me away from my destination. I am on the road a lot and need good directions when in unfamiliar areas. Also, their directions are not always clear, especially when there are three or more roads going in slightly different directions and all I get is a Turn Left….
PMK
“I have been experiencing major problems with Google Maps for directions as well.”
Me too. Their directions to a firehouse/training center at 17525 Aurora Ave. N in Shoreline WA (a suburb just north of Seattle) say and show going west from I-5 on 175th Ave. N, turning right onto Aurora (aka SR 99), and making a U-turn in the middle of it at 177th, which is illegal and dangerous. (I sent them a complaint, to which I didn’t get a response.)
Similar problems with Google Maps. The only thing to be said in its favor is that it’s still better than apple maps and wake.
Spell checker got me. Wake should be Waze.
Nothing new. Google has practiced censorship for a long time.
I recently tried to find information pertaining to the actual performance of residential roof-top solar systems. It was frustrating because 99% of Google search results are fact-less hype and promotions about how solar is now “cheaper than coal”. I never did find anything useful after trying dozens of different search word combinations. It’s like picking through a dumpster. I know that there are a couple of articles out there that I want to read, but where? It’s like the view of America if you never leave the interstate.
Follow –> the –> money.
(Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/business/energy-environment/a-big-solar-plant-opens-facing-doubts-about-its-future.html )
If Google were honest, it would place the disclaimer: “Sponsored Article” after all the pro-“renewable”/pro-solar sc@m pro-AGW bogus science sites.
But, Google is not honest.
Google is a liar.
“cites.” (coulda sworn I typed that…. !)
Network news now only carries “correct” narratives. Soon the government may choose to follow “consensus” and only count the “correct” votes?
I think you may have hit on something. If government follows the Google model, they will start suppressing votes that do not conform to the voter-model consensus (polls). No Trump would ever win again, only preselected Clintons.
If the government follows the Google model? They did this over a decade ago when deciding on whether GooGles entire business model was legal or not. They decided that if they said it was legal for Google, then the they could do it too, hence, the NSA’s unconstitutional –per the 4th amendment– data collection on citizens. There was clear collusion between the federal government and Google.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3575800/
This documentary is a must see for anyone that hasn’t. The courage and sacrifice of the whistleblowers should not go unknown.
I have learned how to use search terms that get around much of the filtering all engines use. Just like learning to tolerate but not follow liberals, it keeps me from destroying my computer.
Pamela has the right idea. If you refine your search terms properly you can find anything that is out there. There are several good books on how to refine the google search.
Google likely qualifies as a monopoly, which requires govt regulation in most cases. In the past the Supreme Court has made some idiotic judgements about monopolies, claiming that if a business
achieves a monopolistic position because of “good work”, then it is exempt from regulation. The problem is that a business that has achieved a monopoly is then in a position that strongly encourages “bad business practices.” Monopolies are inherently bad because they are free from competition, the only means by which businesses can be prevented from setting prices on a whim, extracting unjustifiable profits from the public. Competition keeps businesses (and everything else) honest and nothing works when there is a lack of competition. Nothing.
Google “News” is quite literally a joke. It’s basically a collection of feeds from the very worse of the extreme end of the left wing fake news outlets,
You have to wonder doncha, just how long did they think they could get away with this?
Because as you age and grow old gracefully, you realise the futility, stress and ultimate grief that lying and deception brings on.
You will *always* be found out and then everything you’ve ever stood for, done or achieved and your reputation is brought into serious doubt – if not thrown onto the scrapheap.
It is the epitome of childishness – that is what children do, along with tribalism, gangs, consensii, name-calling, appeals to authority etc.
How many stories on here fit into that/those categories?
Why….
Freedom of speech is an inalienable right endowed by the Creator as the US Declaration of Independence implies. The US Constitution (as amended by the Bill of Rights) limits the federal government power to regulate speech. The Fourteenth Amendment applies that limitation to the States. Neither have the power to limit how a private company relates to speech.
That being said, it is an outrage when a private company by guile, deceit and the manner in which they structure an activity meant to appeal to the public and thereby earn money from the public, when they by policy attempt to limit my freedom of speech. In that case, I am still able to exercise my inalienable right of freedom of association and to cease using their services.
But be warned, there are plenty of people who seen to preclude us from exercising our freedom of association even where it is a private matter and otherwise peaceful. Here is a surprising parallel: where people lie myself accept the plain words of Scripture with respect to sexual morality. We refuse to accept the “settled consensus” that a person who engages in homosexuality is normal and moral. So when people like myself cannot and will not be conscripted into providing personal services for same sex marriage, we are hectored, scolded, and even legally sanctioned when we attempt to peacefully exercise our freedom of association. Some of us have lost our businesses because of government fines and legal action.
Some how and some way, advocates of “climate change” will attempt to forbid anyone from discussing contrary evidence or views. The Southern Poverty Law Center will label us as a “hate group”. WWWT will some day be a “hate site” Some future Attorney General will find ways to limit the civil rights of anyone associated with a “hate group”, and overnight a lot of us will be one some list and find life difficult because we simply demand our inalienable rights. I hope this is unlikely, but stranger things have happened when new candidates get into office.
Here’s a suggested strategy for Leo Goldstein or others for attacking this issue:
1. Draw attention to the negative impacts of bad Google reliability ratings on the income potential of websites. Website owners could do that by participating in a class action lawsuit against Google, demanding discovery of those ratings for their websites. Google of course would fight it like crazy, but this could draw a lot of negative publicity to their company. Google’s great wealth could make even a low probability of success worthwhile for some lawyers to prosecute the suit on contingency.
2. If and when Google’s defenses succeed, file another suit demanding Google allow users the option to turn off the “nanny” filtering of their results. Given the current hostility to political correctness, fake news, etc. that could be very popular. Trying to fight it would generate additional backlash against Google’s attempts to function as the Ministry of Truth from Orwell’s 1984.
I have no legal training, so suggestions from the more knowledgeable of how to make this fit into the constraints of what’s actually possible in the legal system would be greatly appreciated.
By the way, is Leo any relative of the Emmanuel Goldstein who was fighting Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984? Death to Big Brother!
Hate legislation has been used to limit free speech in Canada. It all started out so reasonable. Use chairperson instead of chairman. Where could the harm be?
Now whole areas of thought are illegal if you give them voice. Somewhere someone will be offended and we can’t have that.
I’ll say it again: The Southern Poverty Law Center is a hate group.
The original brilliant idea of the Google founders was to rank web pages according to the number of links to those pages, i.e. the most important pages were those that people on the internet had judged to be most important.
That turned out to be too democratic. Now the progressive elites at Google feel they know more than the unwashed hoards, and it is their responsibility to guide them toward ‘correct’ thinking.
The classic Google method, with a few tweaks to account for spammers, was a great search rating algorithm. The only improvement I can see is to account for the user’s own feedback on page quality. But by trying to make their own assessment of “fact”, google has ruined what they had.
Last year during the US election cycle, I ran an experiment with google and Bing. typing in the search bar Hillary Clinton He….. gave me completely different suggestions.
Google gave me Hillary Clinton Headbands, Height, Heels. Bing gave me several suggestions based on questions regarding her health, as her fainting and seizures and coughing fits were all in the news at the time.
It was pretty clear at the time the “fix” was in from Google on its Presidential preferences.
The fakeness of it all is very, very disturbing. That which is so poorly constructed shall not last long. I feel badly for those gullible enough to be unaware.
Won’t even know what hit ’em.
i have reached the age (61) where “old fart” is increasingly appropriate, and I just assume everyone has a bias, and is usually providing information to press their cause. Identifying that cause is a nice intellectual game, and generally useful.
Google ha gone into the void of trying to rate sites on truth, and college students can have a interminable discussion as to what the criteria for that is. What might be more useful would be any known associations the writer has, such as Greenpeace or Scientology or The Muslim Brotherhood.
At least to me a writer’s bias is normally fairly obvious without knowing his/her associations. What I try to do is find and read enough articles that cover different sides of a subject, then make up my own mind. As an engineer, I spent a considerable amount of time developing my B.S. Detection Meter. Now retired it has come in very handy parsing the internet when anywhere from 70% to 90% of the available information is total garbage. Just as an example, in researching climate change I had categorized Real Climate and their ilk within the first couple of weeks and already started looking for alternatives. I think I found Climate Audit the third week of my research. WUWT took a little longer.
Grumbling won’t do any good — how does one go about notifying Google of their objections to their bias?
Michael, just do what I and others have already done, stop using Google and move on. There are alternatives, I don’t miss Google at all since I have started using Duckduckgo. You can send them a comment about why you are leaving if it will make you feel better. Somewhere at the bottom of the page, carefully hidden, is a Contact Us link. If enough people leave Google, it is just a matter of time before they notice that user-numbers have dropped. I need to stop using Gmail too, but it is going to be a huge hassle as I have used my Gmail addy since it was introduced.
PMK
You stop using Google.
Google Search is a proprietary service, so one should not be surprised it is biased.
The solution is, obviously, to leave Google alone and switch to a community based search engine.
However, my greatest fear is that as we are running out of IPv4 address space, not IPv6 will follow, but Google would provide Internet gateways for free between the various IPv4 networks, while monitoring the entire traffic on them, putting everything into a huge database and marketing its contents as it sees fit. You would even be required to approve their terms of service, shrouded in legalese, in order to use it.
The internet is a wonderful construct, it works without any governance, because of its recursively modular structure. All this is endangered by quasi monopolies like Google.
What is the origin/location of the document that is linked to as “Guidelines”?
It doesn’t appear to be a document that is intended for public presentation. It is not obvious to me that it is even a document from within Google. Perhaps it is, but it is difficult to assess as presented without more background information.
For example, the linked document is at http://www.webcitation.org/6s6ADo48R
Who owns that address? What is the purpose of that website?
From Internic for webcitation.org
Registrant Name: Gunther Eysenbach
Registrant Organization: Centre for Global eHealth Innovation
Registrant Street: Toronto General Hospital, 190 Elizabeth Str
Registrant City: Toronto
These Guidelines are published by Google at https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//insidesearch/howsearchworks/assets/searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf. The link to an archived version is in the article.
I used to keep a logbook of sites that were of specific interest to me. I still have that. Sometimes I refer to it when I haven’t visited a site in a while. It helps if you are specific in your online search. When I started using the internet at home (several donkey’s years ago by internet progress timespans), finding something specific was harder than it is now.
Amazon has the same problem. You may be interested in a certain product from one of their vendors, but unless you are specific about the product and have the vendor’s name, you may find yourself sorting through dozens to hundreds of vendors and not finding what you want.
Same with YouTube. For example, if I want to watch train videos and type in ONLY trains on the YouTube search block, I won’t get the specific train I want to see.
I’ve been trying to find any and all written papers on the Aftonian ice period, which has been abandoned by most glaciologists and geologists because the analysis of the drift deposits was incorrectly done. All I get now is charts. I could sit and click the mouse for days and probably not find what I’m looking for, but I might be better off at the library.
It’s just business, people. If you want your product – in this case, real climate science – to be found, you should include search-specific terms and I don’t mean ‘real climate science’. Whether or not there is any political intent on Google’s part is not clear to me. In all of these examples, the more popular sites will come up first, based on the number of hits they get. I think it would be far more constructive to emphasize using specific terms for web searches.
Try keeping a logbook of your searches and the sites you like. It might ease your angst a bit.
Don’t forget our own special d=ni=rs search engine. Also Google Scholar, duckduckgogo, in the search box and toolbar……
http://www.defyccc.com/search/#gsc.tab=0
“Google consumes as much or more energy as the entire city San Francisco, and falsely claims that 100% of it is renewable energy. Remember last year’s headlines like Google Says It Will Run Entirely on Renewable Energy in 2017 (NY Times) and Google to be powered 100% by renewable energy from 2017 (The Guardian)? Now Google claims it has achieved that goal. Of course, this is a lie – Google gets electricity from the grid, and the energy it consumes is generated from the local mix of coal, natural gas, nuclear, and some hydro-power. But it pays “renewable energy” ventures, in some of which Al Gore and his buddies are investors, and calls this operation “energy purchase.” It looks to me more like a fraud, possibly even a bribe. Well, Google management might think it buys virtual energy.”
Zero supporting evidence from Mr. Goldstein on his claim.
Just you try to run a bunch of servers on wind and solar and see how far you get. It might actually be partially true for Facebook who has located a lot of their servers near Luleå in Northern Sweden where power is virtually 100 % hydro (and, probably more important, cheap).
Just go to Google on any windless night.
Something appeared to happen to Google search a few weeks ago – I’ve changed nothing with my browser etc.
Whereas the search used to happily chain through all the credible ‘realist’ sites, so I’d enter WUWT, then get NALOPKT suggested by Google, then JoNova etc., it now only suggests ‘funded by’/’debunked by’ trasher sites and full on CAGW sites.
I googled “skeptical climate change website” and Skeptical Science came up first, WUWT was half way down the screen. I went to Duck Duck Go and did same. Skeptical Science was again first, I scrolled for a very long time and gave up trying to find an entry for WUWT. Bing, Skeptical Science also first, with an article title from WUWT showing up on the fifth page. So anecdotal evidence suggests that while Google may have their thumb on the scales, other options appear to be worse.
That said, Google represents a real problem for society because of its near monopoly on search. Knowledge is power, and Google is the de facto index gateway to knowledge. Power corrupts, and that (sadly) is a repetition of history that I doubt Google is immune from. At some point that power will have to be regulated. Depending on who does the regulation, that could well be worse.
On the leading russin search engine (yandex.ru) WUWT comes up as #3.
Sobering thought, given all the above….
What if Anthony Watts had not lost that school board election back in 2007….
Take heart!
God. Is. In. Control.
God. Is. In. Control.
≠========
So many times, when it appeared all was lost, fate stepped in and dealt the only winning card left in the deck.
Hi, Ferdb,
If your “Fate” has:
1. A mind.
2. Amazing intelligence gathering abilities (to know when that card is direly needed).
3. A will.
4. A pattern of siding with truth and “saving the day.”
5. The power to execute its wishes.
Then, you believe in “God” (as defined by the vast majority of those who use or who have ever used that name).
You prefer to call “God” “Fate,” but, I hope you will take a moment to consider why you do. Stop and consider whether it is because you can’t have a relationship with “Fate.” You will be safe from that. Safe as a hermit who shuns human relationships is “safe.” Seriously, through, wouldn’t you rather have a relationship with a super-intelligent, wise, loving, playful, delightful, artistic, musical, person who loves you? I would!
Oh, certainly, “Fate” isn’t going to tell you not to commit adultery or to not do other sins, but, “Fate” also isn’t going to care one fig what happens to you when you die — or while you trudge along on the earth. Someone who loves you will comfort and counsel and give you lovely gifts (as well as come to your rescue — just like “Fate” does 🙂 ). And know. And care.
Okay, enough already, huh? I hope you know that I would not have bothered to say such things to just anyone, Ferdb. Your high intelligence (clear from your comments on WUWT) and sensitivity to spiritual matters told me that talking to you about such things would not be a waste of time.
Take care, up there! (hope those B.C. forest fires didn’t cause you any grief)
Janice
ferdberple July 22, 2017 at 7:16 pm says;
“God. Is. In. Control.
≠========
So many times, when it appeared all was lost, fate stepped in and dealt the only winning card left in the deck.”
So,…. God hates Canadians? 😉
Can you source this please?
“Google (Alphabet) pays income tax at the effective rate 19%, instead of 41% combined federal and California tax rate it is supposed to pay.”
What other companies might have a similar situation? ExxonMobil perhaps? Are tax deferrals included when that money will have to be paid later? Then there’s the foreign tax credit. If Google had to pay Germany billions of dollars for money earned there, should they get a credit on the their Federal taxes? Same for ExxonMobil.
Arguments against Google’s corporate tax can easily slide over to many S & P 500 corporations.
Disclosure: I own Google and ExxonMobil through low cost total stock market mutual funds. I own more ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP through a low cost Energy sector mutual fund.
I understand the author’s oint, but can’t help seeing it (mostly) as the tantrum of a spoiled child. Exactly what did you expect Mr. Goldstein?
Quite a few bright folks worked on the internet, many of them of a classical liberal (“libertarian”) mind. We made an effort to design it so it would be very difficult for any single organization/entity to take control of it and we did that for a reason; we were all paranoid conspiracy theorists. 🙂 “Trust No One” was our catchphrase. You can see this philosophy expressed very clearly in the design of BGP (Boundary Gateway Protocol) for example, along with the design of other competing peering architectures.
There are some weak points, DNS (Domain Name Services) can be one and your ultimate choice of search engines can be another. Some ISPs will hijack DNS traffic (known as “port hijacking”) and if you encounter one of them you should bring the matter to their attention; let them know you’re buying bandwidth from them and nothing else. You should have a right to use whatever DNS server you like. That’s something the FCC needs to make very clear to service providers. But I digress.
Back in the 70’s all your information was aggregated and controlled by a few television broadcasters and newspapers. Those entities had a virtual lock on your perception of reality. Right around 1989 all of that changed.
For a little over a decade, the world was suddenly open. There was, for a very brief time, an information Renaissance and it lasted (in my opinion) a bit past 2000, when it began to fade. But the upside is you still have better access to information than anyone had in the 70’s or 80’s. That this author (Leo) can even make his case is evidence of that. If it wasn’t possible to detect search engine bias by using a different engine and comparing the results, he wouldn’t even be aware of it.
Yes, “free” search engines are rigged; they get paid by interested parties to preferentially deliver information. If you want an “unbiased” search there are organizations you can pay, but you’ll still get some degree of curation. Uncurated views of the web aren’t likely to be very useful, so you need to consider that.
Choosing a search engine in the 21st century is a lot like choosing a newspaper was back in the old 20th. You have several to choose from and they’re all biased. Such is the human condition.
Shouldn’t that acronym be REAT?
Thanks Roger, you saved my anal retentive mind from making the same post but I am still wondering how so many previous comments did not mention this earlier.
Is the inability to get an acronym right a(nother) reason not to use Google?
Yes
Personally I use yandex.ru when searching for something “controversial”. It’s a sad commentary on the state of the US when one has to recommend a russian search engine as being more objective.
Google is like other modern giant corporations owned by Left-leaning elitists who pretend to want socialism. It conforms to the agenda of the modern Left.
Waow!!
You can always try BAIDU (Chinese). This is what a Communist government allows for a search engine . I have not found WUWT by looking for climate change sites. I can only find the site by looking for WUWT specifically.
I have been aware of this for some time. I used to be able to provide links in my comments by simply Googling the subject with explicit wording. That no longer works. All the results in the first few pages are consensus websites, and the one I am searching just isn’t there. I have to give up because I just don’t have the time or patience to wade through hundreds of pages. Google no longer works as a search engine for sceptical science. It is very frustrating because my opponents dismiss my comments on the grounds that I have not provided links and accuse me of making it up.
I did a search on google for “climate change websites”, and WUWT didn’t show up until page 9.
A search for “global warming websites” didn’t show WUWT until page 7.
Enough said…
SkepticalScience showed up on both searches either on page 1 or 2…there were a lot of ads which showed up early on…
Just ran my own google search and it depends on how you phrase your question .
Top ten visited climate websites , gives this site (WUWT) at No4 , which surprised even me .
But they do give green websites as most visited .
Is climate change real , gives you mainly pro warming results up top you have to scroll down and go looking for what you’re after .
As for is Google impartial on this subject I’m actually not sure most things I look up I don’t get the exact match for the first few suggestions anyway so I’m used to having to go to page two or three etc to see if I can find what I’m after .
To me it seems like a money thing , they make more of this one so I will list it first , but you would think a specific search would bring up a specific subject and only that subject , this is something they are guilty of .
I have found this article through Google’s service “this might be of interest to you. So much for your theory…
“The company has a very strong view that we should make decisions in politics based on facts, what a shock, and the facts of climate change are not in question anymore,” Schmidt said. “Everyone understands that climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people. They’re just literally lying.”
– Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt
“scientific consensus” is antithetical to diversity of thought and knowledge! Shame on Google!
What am I doing wrong? WUWT comes up first for “most popular climate websites”
[edit: might it be different here in Australia?]
Reply: This may have been an inappropriate edit by a moderator. Hey mod, email me to discuss~ctm
What’s inappropriate about the mods comment ? I am in OZ but use an iPad so had to bring up the google browser then do the searching , does any of this effect the result ? Who knows .
Also you googled a different question , you asked for most popular and I asked for top ten .
Don’t know what happened there – a glitch? – was my edit to my own comment mistaken for something else? I’ll try again..
I’m pleased to report that when I use the search term “most popular climate websites” mentioned earlier in this thread, not only does WUWT come up on the first page, it is the *first result*. Just wondering if by not using a desktop but an Android tablet in Australia could that possibly be giving me different search results?
But yes, back to the tenor of this topic, I often find the same filtering by Google Search towards the Left when researching controversial topics, to the point where I think if what you’re looking for isn’t immediately visible then you’re unlikely to find it by flipping through the endless pages of search results. I even have compliled a list of numerous queries that don’t return anything even remotely close to a “result”.
As always, the careful wording of the search topic determines the relvancy of the results.. unless your expectations differ from Google’s “concensus”!
Undoubtedly Google playing its part in ensure we all think right, err.. Left. With now a generation of kids brainwashed to the litany of the CO2 scam I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised.
This article pretty much confirms my impressions/frustrations that almost any searches I make related to climate issues seem to produce an obviously biased response. So even when my search criteria are quite specific and there is but one obvious correct, number one response, I find myself skimming over two, three or more pages of DeSmog, RealClimate and other dross before anything remotely relevant is listed.
Unfortunately the all powerful resources of Google often mean that, they alone do have the relevant information and while they do their best to hide it, often if you have the resolve to plough through the mountains of irrelevant/misleading results it can be found.
Wouldn’t it be great if we had an honest, unbiased search engine with even half the resources of Google that we could turn to.
Mind you a simple search for ‘climategate’ sees WUWT not show up till the ninth result on page 2, just a few after Jo Nova.
Definite bias there – both relgated to page 2!
I have been making a living from analyzing and adjusting Google results for more than 10 years across hundreds of sites, and would be more than happy to advise gratis on improving your Google organic performance. If you eliminate potential gotchyas on the site it would then be much easier to empirically prove “censorship” or not. I have to say, at a quick glance, a “not in the top 100 results” for climate change looks very suspect. please feel free to email me at the address supplied if this is of interest.
Lots of journalistic flaws in this article. The only sources I saw listed we’re articles opposing the authors point, with no sources as evidence. You can’t claim it’s “climate realism” when you are ignoring all facts and playing make believe. Look at the weather channel website, look at NASA’s website, look at global temperature change over the last 200 years. Look at the temperature at the poles, look at I’ve cores pulled from the Arctic. Look at the town’s that have already had to deal with a rise in water level. Look at how we’re the only country in the world aside from Syria to not be in the Paris agreement. Syria did not sign as they currently have a lot of shit going on right now that is a bit more pressing for them. And the other remaining country did not sign because they felt the Paris agreement is not strict enough on larger countries.
And contrary to what you heard from the mouth of Donald Trump. The Paris agreement does not hurt America because there are no punishments for failing. Each country pledged to contribute in some way and each country themselves picks their own way of encouraging itself to contribute. It is only a “bad deal”in the sense it’s not really a deal.
Google received outcry from people all over the world to start adjusting search ranking for websites known to not be credible, they purposefully did not do this prior. Google has stated several times they did not want to have to act as fact checkers, they hired multiple organizations to handle reporting pages with misleading or factually incorrect information. These reports are fed into Google software which automatically adjusts ranking.
ALARMIST RUBBISH FROM START TO FINISH.
Try this one in Google just for grins and see if you get what I get:
climate website with most intelligent commenters
I got two articles listed in #1 and #2 and this website’s homepage listed as #3.
WUWT came up first for me.
Well an easy fix stop using Google Search I did so they can’t feed me their bull sh$t until they do it right
Consensus means a general agreement. It is a perfectly valid word to use in reference to scientific opinion. The overwhelming consensus among scientists who actually study this stuff is that man made climate change is real and happening right now. It’s funny, but the only reason I read this article was because it turned up in my Google Now feed…
Re: The overwhelming consensus among scientists who actually study this stuff is that man made climate change is real
You apparently need to do a bit more reading, Adrian…. if you want to learn the facts about the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) issue.
You might like to begin here:
97 Articles Refuting the “97% Concensus”
http://www.populartechnology.net/2014/12/97-articles-refuting-97-consensus.html
After you finish reading those, here are some more:
1350+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarmism
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
Further, Adrian, re: your Google Now bogus argument against this thread’s article’s premise
GN is customized by the user –> YOU. If you want your argument to have any weight, here, you will have to provide proof that a GENERAL Google search (with no “Follow” of WUWT or like custom settings) results in WUWT coming up in your feed.
Re: my “Further….”
Here is the link to my comment referred to by “further” which WILL publish on “Test” but not on this thread for some reason: https://wattsupwiththat.com/test/#comment-2559924 .
Adrian: You wrote: “Consensus means a general agreement. It is a perfectly valid word to use in reference to scientific opinion. The overwhelming consensus among scientists who actually study this stuff is that man made climate change is real and happening right now. It’s funny, but the only reason I read this article was because it turned up in my Google Now feed…”
You inserted a strawman argument about what you believe is scientific opinion, that might make your statement appear reasonable. One should not distill all scientific opinion such as you have. Algorithms that quell an otherwise valid search because of “consensus”, further drive the belief of artificial and poorly understood scientific consenus. So, no, Adrian, it’s not reasonable to quell free speech such as is the subject of this thread.
Mario
By the way everyone. We get about 5,000 to 8,000 page views per day from Google referrals.
Thx CTM. Google is backing the wrong horses.
Trying to get this comment (which publishes just fine on “Test”) to appear — it dovetails with my July 23, 2017, 2:57pm reply to A. above:
*********************
THIS is what I’m saying “further” about….. (what in the world happened to my reply??)
Re: The overwhelming consensus among scientists who actually study this stuff is that man made climate change is real
You apparently need to do a bit more reading, Adrian…. if you want to learn the facts about the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) issue.
You might like to begin here:
97 Articles Refuting the “97% Consensus”
http://www.populartechnology.net/2014/12/97-articles-refuting-97-consensus.html
After you finish reading those, here are some more:
1350+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarmism
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
As a google user, you are NOT the “customer”
You are the merchandise
The advertisers are the customers
If there truly is a consensus, then Google wouldn’t have to put it’s thumb on the scale. The vast majority of articles, web sites, etc would already be supporting “the consensus” and contrarian sites would be down graded automatically by the lack of links and traffic.
Many people will actively spread disinformation particularly when there is a lot of money on the line, corporate media being the largest offenders. Political forces shouldn’t interfere with facts and so they have to put their thumb on the scale. I doubt they have to do this outside the US where the public is better informed.
You know who else says “Your Money or Your Life”?