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.
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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.