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Optimizing News Sites For Google News
malibucreek writes "More trouble for Google News? Yesterday, it was Google News censoring stories for China. Today, the Online Journalism Review details a potential conservative bias in the site's algorithm for news search results. The story also includes some details about how Google ranks stories on its news page. Turns out that on Google News, backlinks do *not* improve search positioning."
keywords and phrases that match users' precise searches and to write in informal, accessible language.
The article also suggests that using the name is full form, repeatedly, and using keywords in your title makes it receive a higher rank of google news.
Yahoo news is filtered by people; google news is completely automated.
From porn to religion... from the left to the right... many groups have figured out how to manipulate search results. It's life or death in the web world to optimize, It's google's responsibility if they are going to deliver news that they deliver both sides of a story.
I'm glad I didn't move along. ;)
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
...discovery made that Google is actually trying to profit from it's own tools...
Free GMail invite with Free iPods!
And so the circle is complete. People will now start to attack and slander a once good service, because, hey, it's had its good run. I for one welcome our new evilmegaglobecorp, Google.
I mean look at US News and World Report which is probably the widest read news weekly. Look how straight-laced Kerry has had to go to even attempt to appeal to the Midwestern, Rust Belt, and Southern voters. The US, like it or not, is a very conservative country.
No, its not going to crawl through a Ih8tebu5h's livejournal entry for 'news' or other blogger oriented 'news'.
Wasn't there a slashdot article a while ago about Google having a seperate section for bloggers so they didn't skew news? Not that all bloggers are liberal, but most of the internet savvy folks I've met are.
Not trying to troll here, I don't understand why people are trying to call shinanigans on Google, if they have a bias then that is their right to. If you do not like the services they are providing then don't use it. It's not like they are slandering anyone or posting false headlines.
ItWasFree.com - Take the mystery
Google: another system to game. Of course it's being distorted by a "conservative" bias. "Conservative" really means "corporate", the ideology of the 1950s "corporation man". Corporations have money and time to game any system for profit, and no reason not to. Their competition, regular people, don't have the resources or organization, and have human characteristics like "fairness" and "conscience" holding them back. Any parity between corporations and people speaks of only the innate power of the people.
--
make install -not war
i) world saturated with unreadable political blogs, many right wing.
ii) man who is actually President gets more genuine international news coverage (speeches, commentary, policy, state visits and campaigning) than man who isn't (basically just campaigning).
Thus aforementioned blogs tend to show up prominently in News digests about non-President, because there isn't much to say about him.
/ ~Rocket Science
Has anyone ever though that maybe just maybe the media is conservative bias themselves? Its pretty hard to find unspun news these days..
google has news?
"I think what you're seeing is an odd little linguistic artifact," said Zuckerman, former vice president of Tripod.com and now a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society who studies search engines. The chief culprit, he theorized, is that mainstream news publications refer to the senator on second reference as Kerry, while alternative news sites often use the phrase "John Kerry" multiple times, for effect or derision. To Google News' eye, that's a more exact search result.
Seems reasonable enough to me. Most of the major news I catch does indeed refer to Kerry without his first name. Likewise for Bush.
Hardly an intentional bias.
So now they are IPO'd it seems they are under a different microscope.
Pre-IPO couple of college kids that worked hard and are smart and made the world better.
Post-IPO, this company is the new MS, look at all the sinister, conspiring things they do, always knew they were no good.
Whats next Google supports terrorism? I guess whatever sells papers or click throughs.
Google has a conservative bias? "miserable failure" -> I'm Feeling Lucky damn liberal hippys.
I'm glad we don't have to worry about censorship here on /.
It looks that way because of how the liberals and Kerry have been making such asses of themselves lately. The libs had it...and then they threw it away. -1 Troll.
This might be a stupid question and I'll probably get modded offtopic for it but...
Where is it law that a news reporting agency (which Google news essentially is) has to provide both sides to the news. The way I understand it is they can display results (report) however they damn well please.
Sure it isn't very ethical to skew your news reporting to uphold your political views but it's been happening for centuries.
This sig has no nutritional value...
I'll risk being modded offtopic and mention that Krishna Bharat happens to be a graduate of the GVU (Graphics Visualization and Usability) lab at the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. I happened to meet him on one of his visits to the school, and he being the first (and only) rep from Google I've met, I found him to fit the Google stereotype pretty snugly. His old webpage at GaTech is here
In any case, I did manage to flunk the Google interview, though I got a TShirt in return, so I guess it's okay.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Liberals victims of vast right-wing search engine conspiracy!
Did you know? They were originally going to call the search engine the O'Google Factor.
Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but there is no unbiased news anymore. The media...print, radio, online...is mostly controlled by a few of the major conglomerates. Not only that, but they all have their slants on what is reported and how it is reported. Here's an interested quote from WSJ Opinion Journal
"The chairman of the entertainment giant Viacom said the reason was simple: Republican values are what U.S. companies need."
It's nice to know the media is deciding what to let through and what to report "in our best interest".
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
This is just a reflection of how polarized our society has become; it was accelerated post 1994, and 9/11 -> Iraq has sent it around the moon and back again.
s /main645393.shtml
The article really just re-enforces my thought that it doesn't really matter what news source you read at any point in time, as long as you are reading many different sources on every side of an issue [to the extent possible]. Then you can settle on the truth being somewhere in the middle.
but this is just bullsh!t no matter which side you are on:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/24/politic
i saw the baby, and the baby looked at me
In defensive of Goolgle, Google is still considered beta, even if it has been so for a quite a while.
Thats quite likely, but look at the consequence of it. Kerry has to "act" to try to "relate" to a sizable portion of the country he wants to lead. It comes off as very fake. Although Bush and Kerry both came from very privledged backgrounds, somehow Bush can relate to people of other backgrounds. We've turned national politics into a cult of personality. Bush just has a more likeable personality, so he will get elected.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I guess that's why Daily Kos, that bastion of conservative thinking, was listed yesterday on the "front page" of google news as a news source?!
EVERY time I select Toby Keith it plays the Dixie Chicks.
That surely doesn't explain why Xinhua (Chinese State News) seems to have a rather disproportionate ammount of coverage on Google News.
That's right, you know Dan's going to be hitting the streets looking for a job soon enough. Let's make sure we keep Dan employed, and put him in charge of censoring the news for google...hell he could just make it all up for them. :-)
The article also suggests that using the name is full form, repeatedly, and using keywords in your title makes it receive a higher rank of google news.
I find that hard to believe.
When many sites release news, it's timing from highly ranked sites more than keywords that get Google news to pick it up. Also probably has a little bit of relevance attached to the scrape as it goes by... *Smack forehead* Doh!
What does this title tell you?
"From the Filly Files: A win is a Win"
Does it have ANYTHING to do with a specific team or sport?
no... yet it got indexed by Google News and was the primary story for a short period of time under the search "Patriots" in Google News.
I find it hard to beleive you can game the newsbot with keywords in teh title the same way you can build your ranking in the regular seach results.
oh.. yeah... here's the link to that article:
http://patriots.theinsiders.com/2/297337.html
Fave site: www.PatriotsInsider.com
I was in a meeting with clients the other day. The company was looking to create publicity for their new product and I was there to look into an ad project.
Anyway, in the briefing for the product, I found out that the name they had given to the product was very generic, stright out of the english dictionary (for sake of the story, lets call the product "Apple").
So I asked the marketing guy and one of the directors who was there why they had chosen "Apple" when if soembody were to google Apple, they would get 1001 links about the computer company, then about the fruit, before people would get to their company.
The answer? They said they paid a company who promised that for their fee, they could get the company's page on their product called "Apple" within the top 4 search results on EVERY search engine. (Fat chance)
My point is, optimizing is an evil business every step of the way. If you ask me, it's downright fraud.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Apparently, it falls the other way as well, but the very fact that a blog on either extreme of the spectrum is showing up that much is a little disconcerting.
Punditry of all stripes is great and I read a ton of them from both camps regularly, but I come to Google News for news, not the OpEd page.
You know what?
I actually use google news quite a bit and considering all the articles I see pop up from:y
http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/conspiracy_theor
I find that 'conservative' bias a bit hard to believe.
The "second tier" conservative sites write positive things about George Bush and negative things about John Kerry. The analogous liberal/left sites (who don't seem to rate sneering comments about their importance) write negative things about George Bush but have zero positive enthusiasm for Kerry. Therefore, "George Bush" gets both pro and con results; "John Kerry" only gets con. No conspiracy required, just an uninspiring candidate.
You can see the same thing, by the way, on bumpers. Here in John Kerry's home state, there are a zillion anti-Bush bumper stickers and about as many pro-Bush stickers as pro-Kerry stickers. Are cars optimizing their bumpers for my eyes?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
No. All media has a liberal bias. I saw it on Fox (which also has a liberal bias, being part of the evil monolithic media itself.)
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Panic in the streets as Google is revealed to not be the second coming of Christ and embodiment of all that is well and good!
Seriously, did you really think Google wasn't biased? That Google wasn't capable of taking 'sponsorship' from certain people in order for them to secure a more prominent podium for their views? Everything Google does is for money, just like any other company. They're not evil, they're just incorporated. We don't gasp in surprise when Microsoft bend the facts a certain way, so why are we shocked when Google does it? If you truly believe Google is benevolent to a fault, you're living in a dream world. They exist to make money, not give you 100% unbiased news. I would say it's very hard to write without a political slant, but as this was just an algorithm and not stories themselves I'm more inclined to think this was deliberate - the sad truth is, lies pay, and while every twist of the facts wrings a few more dollars of 'sponsorship' from conservatives, they'll keep on twisting - less so than Fox News, admittedly, but twisting all the same.
Disclaimer: Yes I did read the article, I just refuse to believe you could 'accidentally' create algorithms that favour low-end right-leaning sites. This is either a reflection of the Google guys' own political views, or a good dose of sponsorship... but the former wouldn't have made for a good rant, now would it? Now what's the punishment for insulting Google? -1, Troll? OK, thanks..
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Actually, if you RTA it describes how because of a language anomality (John) google pulls up fringe sites when quryying for John Kerry. Similar queries for GWB pull up more actual news sites that at least try to honor their duty to report both sides.
/. moderators mod anti-conservative posts as flamebait won't get me far...but anyone who moderates at -1 is supposed to look out for abuses like this. Ah well, life isn't fair, it is?
So basically, visiting a flame site is not the same as visiting a biased news site that honors it's duty to give inches of column space to both sides of the spectrum. Yes, they pick and choose, but at least somtehing from the opposising side is there.
Crying that
Anyone know how to research large institutional purchases of google stock?
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." - Josef Stalin
There are grainy pictures that show a cluster of Google computers attached to the undercarriage of the plane that crashed into the first world trade center tower. Coincidence? I think not.
Okay, you make a good point, but if you think about it, why doesn't "George Bush" bring up the same kind of results? The uses of "President", "George" and "Bush" are used just as much as "Senator," "John," and "Kerry."
The next paragraph partially answers this:
With an occasional exception, Weblogs are generally not found among the Google News results, so Zuckerman had some advice for aspiring political publishers who want to game the search engines: Don't blog -- start an alternative news network. Use terms like George Bush and John Kerry frequently, rather than their last names alone, in both your text and headlines. Publish new works frequently.
While this is a good tactic for news publishers, I have a problem with Google blaming the algorythm and telling people to try to change to match the algorythm. Perhaps the algorythm is flawed? Perhaps there are too many "alternative news networks" spreading nothing but biased coverage (for either side of the campaign). Perhaps weblogs should be included? I'm no media writer but I've seen far more blogs for democratic candidates and their supporters than republicans. Perhaps the republicans create "news networks" because that's a typical republican thing to do?
No news source is perfect but there seem to be some simple answers to fixing any kind of bias here which is more than just a linguistic aberration.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
One of the biggest shortcomings of the Google News method is not taking into account the source's expertise, implied or otherwise. For instance, domestic US stories are often headlined using Xinhua or The Scotsman as the lead source. It would seem that you will get more detail and understanding from a source closer to the story, or specializing in the story's subject. A Connecticut newspaper or TV station is going to give me more detail and perspective on a story taking place here than someone far away. This weekend, this headline was featured on Google News (I wrote about this in my blog, so I have it at hand): The Sopranos buries the competition. That's a valid story in entertainment news, but the source was, "The Scotsman - Scotland's National Newspaper Online." The next listing was for the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) followed by ABC News and Planet Out. Truth is, as interesting a tool as Google News is, we still need editors and reporters to weigh facts and sources and see inherent weakness or bias in what is often passed off as complete and balanced facts.
By Lenin, it is all so simple, cannot you fools see it?
[The preceeding was a rhetorical question. After the revolution, your answer will be checked to see if it conforms to "socialist civilized norms", and those in need of re-education will be sent to mine uranium in the "re-education" camps.
That is all.
I'm pretty sensitive to bias in the media considering that I am a journalist interested in the subject and I have to say that I've detected no overt (or subtle for that matter) bias in the stories that Google News presents. I see stories from both conservative and liberal newspapers when I do searches on news stories. If there's conservative bias, it must be very subtle.
Statement of bias: I am a conservative so perhaps by judgment is being colored. Also, Google News has run a number of stories from my online magazine so perhaps I'm feeling kind towards them.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
right under the title "Google News", it says "beta"! kinda greyed-out, though.....
What are the odds that the political landscape Google is surveying actually is more conservative than OJR thinks? If they detected a difference between the sites which use human editors and the Google aggregators which do not, what are they really measuring here - the biases of the Google algorithms or the biases of the other human editors? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Google only knows what it finds.
Just a hunch, but I bet these guys are still trying to figger out why Fox News is so dang-ole popular.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
So where did those Nigerian uranium documents come from? Oh, wait, those faked documents were only used to hype a case for invading and occupying a country. No big deal, I guess .... in some people's "world view".
Yahoo: Don't go to Google for news. They have a machine that decides what news relates to what you're looking for. No you should come to our sight, because we KNOW what is really important. You should always come to us for your marching orders...I mean...uhh...news.
I like Googles approach MUCH better. So, there were some anti-Kerry links when you did a search for John Kerry. If as his supporter, you think he is beyond reproach, then type in "John Kerry -"bad news"". Either that or put your fingers in your ears and say "la-la-la-la..."
(Same for Bush, Badnarik, etc...)
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Conservative bias in Google news? It's just an aggregate..it picks up news from all sides of the spectrum. Because of that, it also displays left leaning sites like Salon, and extreme left-leaning blogs such as dailykos.com.
But then, I suspect the reason this article was approved is because it appeals to michael's left leaning bias, which he unapologetically admits he has. As he said: "I'm trying to dispel all notion that I'm unbiased, or that I'll be presenting everything in an entirely unbiased fashion. If my biases totally offend you, you might want to go right now to your user preferences and check the box to block stories posted by me."
If you go to google.ca, click news, there is a Canada News section in English...
But if on the google.ca page you click on Google.ca offered in: Français, then on Actualités (News), you're forwarded to the google.fr (France) news page.
France != French Canada
Whatever.
All newspapers do nowadays for 90% of their content (aside from the local section, which is irrelevant here) is cut-n-paste from the press wires (Associated Press, etc.).
In fact, there's an argument to be made that the FURTHER away you are from the subject, the lower the emotional response, and thus the more objective the content.
and completely leave Yahoo news alone. They will not even run a convervative piece on the front page unless the story clearly slams something else conservatives did in the exact same story.
Yahoo news is some completely liberal but no one complains about that.. do they?
Just three more hours seapeople and you can finally take me away from this crappy God Damned planet full of hippies
"From porn to religion... from the left to the right... many groups have figured out how to manipulate search results. It's life or death in the web world to optimize, It's google's responsibility if they are going to deliver news that they deliver both sides of a story."
Google is in the search/information business, not the news business. Note it is *business*, not journalism. As such, it is incumbent upon them and their shareholders to "optimize" (i.e. bias searches toward what they believe is the best/most profitable user base) because it can sepell the difference between "life or death in the web world." If you want journalistic integrity, I suggest CBS/Dan Rather.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Well there are a couple little problems with Firefox at the moment one that I've seen is some quirkyness with flash and there is also a problem with URL syntax.
If you take a look at the URL sytax for Sybase double click ad you see that they are using "|" verticle lines to seperate variable intead of ampersands. They seem to sometimes interfear with the syntax that firefox uses when opening mutiple tabs in the same window. So the URL is split at every | and each(or some parts) is opened in a new tab. Some time this bring up some interesting sites when they are just random strings.
=1000101
It's a matter of time before Google start selling clearance.
$10 a month - search basics
$100 a month - search basics + more porn
$1000 a month - search basics + real china news
$5000 a month - search anything + gmail account
This article provides links directly to Google to show George Bush and George W Bush search results, but doesn't provide any directly link to search for John Kerry. You only quickly see what the author tells you. I went ahead and searched Google news for John Kerry and got pretty even results compared to George W.
IMO, Google News is not the source to look for unbiased news. It just tries to guess what is current "news". One has to use own judgement to decide the biasness of the news.
Anyway, atleast the article thinks that Google is God and expects it not to be wrong!
Yea, because, uh, i like it how articles from Korean News (media outlet of DPRK) pop up on the Google News "top story" section. Its such a credible news agency....
Google News USA may have a Conservative bias, but Google News UK seems fairly Liberal to me.
Really? That's news to me...it really is. Especially with the Daily Kos right on their news page for all to see. Now if they had Free Republic on their page listed as a source, I'd agree.
I believe the study is slanted.
Om, nomnomnom...
Many publications outside the US don't have such heavy-handed corporate ties. Unfortunately, many of them also don't have resources to do a lot of thorough research, either. I like the Financial Times news from London. A lot of general news, and the readership depends on accurate reporting for making financial decisions. Financial papers may contain economically conservative views, but they have more incentive to be accurate, and the biases are open and honest
Conservatives probably see articles like the following and start sniffing around for conspiracy. Whether a conspiracy exists or not. I'm starting to see a common thread amongst conservatives of boycotting orginizations that even hint liberal ideals. As a conservative myself I see a large movement away from the major media by most of my conservative friends around the nation and world due to "media bias" and its presentation of liberal ideals. (I'm probably redudant here.)
The advent of the internet, blogs, and talk radio allow this to happen. It saddens me because I feel that there hasn't been substantive debate in over a decade because both "new" and "old" media has bias and both camps are clinging on to the media that shares their views and shuns out the opposition.
I'm longing to have a healthy debate about issues rather than a shouting match where both people leave mad feeling more "right" than when they began.
Article
Article
Once upon a time the media was a friend to the public and a threat to the government. Now the media is controlled by so few companies that the government and media may as well be one in the same.
The blatent censorship is painfully obvious as well. Just check out how much coverage is given to the meetings at Bohemian Grove in Northern California. Hundreds of the most powerful and richest men in the world meet there yearly. This includes Dubbya and many others in high power. Why is this event not all over the news? If three baseball players fart at the same time, you can be assured it will plaster the newspapers. But when world leaders gather to discuss policies and do whatever else, there is nearly no news coverage at all. Hmm...
Well then again, if I was a world leader, and doing stuff like this http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/FindingAids/dynaweb/ca lher/bohemian/figures/I0025343B.jpg I would be inclined to tell my media buddies to keep it hush, hush as well. A bit of research and an open mind is all it takes to see things are seriously wrong.
Thomas Jefferson knew how important media is to a true democracy when he stated he ""would rather have newspapers without government than government without newspapers."
For more pics of former grove-mates like above check out the directory listing http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/FindingAids/dynaweb/ca lher/bohemian/figures/
DD
Actually, Google is a business. It's Google job to make money. How they may money or how much money they make depends on the product that they offer and how the public takes to its quality. If people like what they see, then the business can be profitable. If people do not like it, then other news sites will get Google's former business.
One aspect of being profitable is to keep costs down. This includes labor costs. If a computer algorithm can perform a job adequately and for less money than a human (considering that the person will need to be paid + benefits), then from an economic point of view, it makes sense. However, Google should perhaps have a small human team. This investment would allow for the human-aspect of quality assurance - to catch stuff that even the most sophisticated of algorithms cannot catch - and thus could improve quality thereby keeping more or attracting more of an audience allowing for the opportunity to make more money. A human QA professional might be more able to catch things like when lobbyists or whoever try to take advantage of how a system operates and then (at the least) attempts to abuse and/or corrupt the system to fulfill their own agendas.
At any rate, Google did allow for an open look at their news search engine. This is good. I hope that Google will use this feedback objectively to improve their service.
Get some.
Oh? What's that? It's not as comprehensive? Well, it's a wiki, not a search engine! Seems you just can't have it both ways...
Note that there is talk of a WikiNews run by the MediaWiki foundation, but at present it is mostly idle speculation, and no real plans to make such a site.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
1) I'd say it's up to the Kerry campaign to do a better job of online PR.
2) All Google News does is collect and index the content.
It's up to "news aggregators" to report NEWS as "News", not CONTENT as "News". You don't seem to differentiate between the two. It is this very intellectual laziness in Americans that the Republican spin doctors have exploited so well in their propaganda campaign.
A simple test is to run the phrase "Geroge Bush" through Google News: you'll find an equally slanted list of news including sites like:
- http://www.dailykos.com/
- and
- http://www.opednews.com/
Which certainly are NOT unbiased.It's a good article, and I'm glad it was posted, but I wish the submitter (and
I just did a search on google news and every source was reputable, and every article was "news" not opinion. None of the sources that were listed (i.e. useless-knowledge.com) were there.
The question is, how often is it too far one way or the other. It seems to me that when a site frequently updates, it is inevitable that at some point it will be unbalanced.
is not to be taken for granted. In particular, it is often the case that foreign reporting of domesitic issues is more balanced and useful than what we get from American news sources.
Particularly under this latest administration.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
Bush: 17 negative headlines
Kerry: 6 negative headlines
(For the record, I am not reading each and every article, just counting it if the headline appears to be negative. Also, I am also counting headlines that bash both candidates as negative).
Sorry folks, I don't see the 'conservative bias'. Granted one would probably expect a few more negative results with regard to the current president regardless of which party is in office, today Bush had nearly three times as many.
No, I'm not arguing that Google news always has a liberal bias (it uses algorithms, not editors, to decide what to post), just that finding a few conservative-leaning headlines after a few experiments (they only loosely document two, though they claim there were others) is not evidence of a conservative bias.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
...leftists, however, do. Just one more sign of Google's superiority over other obviously biased search engines.
how much you want to bet the people who are complaining about a google bias (is it even real) were defending dan rather recently. funny how things are like that huh?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Come on, that theory just doesn't make sense. If I wanted "unbiased" information about the latest in kidnapping those "evil" Americans, would I look to Al-Jezerra as the best source because it's closest?
You can't pick one example as proof of a theory of bias, and especially so when you define "lack of bias" as whatever viewpoint you agree with.
And what do you mean "particularly under this latest administration". Since when is the popular news media the mouthpiece for the administration...especially this one?
could it be that google isn't finding stories about how wonderful kerry is because no one writes them? I haven't heard virtually anything about why Kerry would be a good president. I have heard lots about why Bush is good or bad or whatever. But nothing good is about Kerry.
No. All media has a liberal bias. I saw it on Fox (which also has a liberal bias, being part of the evil monolithic media itself.)
CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, AP _____ FOX
^
Oh my... the scales have turned!
Stupid Yank. You have no LEFT WING media in your country. You have right and farther right.
google news takes the amount of text into account - forign news sources have longer articles (better too, probably)
Bohemian Grove in Northern California? I though the 5 riches people in the world were know as the Pentavert and that they met bi-annually at a secret location in Colorado known as "The Meadows".
I hate Colonal Sanders with his wee beety eyes! He puts an addictive chemical in his chicken to make you crave it nightly!
when will people understand, that unless there is a full blown text reading and UNDERSTANDING AI ranking sites, there will be tricks to use.
...
.... I live mostly from SEO ... and google pisses me off nowadays ... so critisize it as you like...
Since you use keywords to search, you get pages that are relevant to those keywords..
sure there is ask jeeves where you enter: Where can I buy a brain?
but is still searches for "brain"+"buy" (meybe +"where"
anyway
Or did you really just type all that with a straight face? Ah, never mind, i'm just upset 'cos my great buddy Saddam Hussein who I think is a really great guy is no longer in power.
I get from the article that Bush supporters are better at demagoguery.
So not only do they appeal to to people's basest instincts, they now game the impartial computer?
Turns out that on Google News, backlinks do *not* improve search positioning.
Seems quite reasonable. After all, being news, how is it going to have many backlinks? And how are they all going to be found while the news is still new? By the time the news is old enough to appear in Google's regular results, backlinks become useful. Am I missing something?
A thing may indeed be impossible to achieve, but that does not mean one should not attempt it anyway. I don't think we'd be well served to go back to the yellow journalism days. Thompson's Gonzo journalistic style--which is really just a first person narrative or even documentary--has a place but there are those of use who want a more complete perspective.
This does not mean getting exact opposite pieces of information from both sides. It means getting both sides to comment on a topic.
Aiming for a high standard but not reaching it is better in my mind than aiming for a low standard and hitting your mark.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
All I was saying is that it gets very little press for the kind of event it is, and nearly all of this press is in California. Its kind of hard to tell people it doesn't exist when they can just drive there and see it.
Before you start handing out tinfoil hats, maybe you should open a browser.
DD
...happens to be the fact that those who complain about the perceived biases of various news sites can get those sites removed from Google's index crawl. This happened to indymedia.org after the roving horde of right-wing bloggers hounded Google News incessantly to stop crawling Indymedia sites, due to their "anti-semitism."
Anyone who's worked with Indymedia understands its open publishing model, which carries its own risks. But the entire network of sites was nixed by a coordinated campaign to do just that.
Hence, one may claim Google News has a certain level of "bias by omission." FWIW, I once complained when a "news" piece from R*shlimbaugh.com appeared at the top of some story where its placement was clearly inappropriate. Since I'm just one guy it's no surprise that that site is still being crawled by Google News.
Now, if only I had a legion of like-minded ninnies willing to march in lockstep with me to purge the opinions of those with whom I don't agree, I might have gotten somewhere...
American media has to cater to the average American. Every American may not support the war or the president, but most do to some extent and most people approve of the president to some extent. The news media in the US cannot function if their viewers/readers think they are presenting information that undermine's the government's policies or goes against their own personal beliefs.
So the American capitalist media has to pander to idiots with IQs of 50. Just great!! Us in the civilised world will never be free from the YANKEE IMPERIALIST BASTARDS.
What liberal media? Seriously, Alterman is right on the money here. I watch a lot of international media and, well, you guys don't know how much disinformation and conservative bias you consume per day. The added insult of believing in a "liberal media" would be funny if it wasn't so sad that media owners can so easily manipulate mass opinion.
FAIR has done an excellent job at pointing out bias and its no surprise that ownership and advertising bias tend to help the conservative "pro-big business" and "pro-deregulation" party.
The group International Answer does exist but their agenda does not seem to be to support Saddam Hussein
They do an excellent job of obfuscating their agenda. Look 'em up. They are a pro-socialist, pro-revolutionary, pro-Baathist group. This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. The group's revolutionary leanings are underreported, so you don't even know that they exist.
A thing may indeed be impossible to achieve, but that does not mean one should not attempt it anyway.
That's a nice platitude, but in this case it doesn't cover the whole story. Some journalists are out there saying they are objective when they are obviously not. This is deceptive and harmful.
I write in my journal
> Daily Kos hatesite
Oh, the irony. As you link to LGF who mocks dead protestors like Rachel Corrie by awarding them their "idiotarian award of the year." And they got the entire country of France on there. Umm, who are the haters exactly? I'll let the reader decide:
DailyKos
LGF
Even 30 seconds browsing both sites is enough to figure out who the "hatesite" is.
Not to mention the telegraph is openly and proudly conservative. Just ask its owner Conrad Black.
The daily mail is the brit liberal paper, btw.
>Seems to me that most folks define 'fair' as "whatever I happen to agree with"
Actually most people I know want the fairness doctrine back, which was removed by Reagan and the Republicans in the 80s, so it guarantees that at least two sides of controversial issues are presented. Your whole "both parties are the same, people are all biased partisans" is an easily knocked-over strawmen when you factor in millions who want a real media, more public media, and laws which make those who use our national airwaves at least present the full picture.
Its no coincidence that after the fall of the fairness doctrine did the rise of the super-slanted talk radio/news start. The attack on fair media continues with GOP promises of deregulation, which will give us an even worse media ecology and empower "owner's bias."
Twirlip,
If you're going to make outrageous allegations about ANSWER, you should back them up with evidence. ANSWER is not pro-Bathist, although I believe it does have a socialist leaning.
Anyway, the marches were not pro-ANSWER, they were anti-war. I didn't protest, but if I had, I would have been protesting to represent my opinion, which isn't anti-war, but is anti-unnecessary-war.
Invading Iraq was a foolish idea that only naive ivory-tower neocons could fall in love with. Anyone with even a slight knowledge of the Middle East and its history knew that this wasn't going to be the cakewalk that the neocons promised us.
Read "Baghdad Year Zero", in Harper's magazine, September 2004 edition. To summarize poorly, Iraq was the testing grounds for the neocons' wacky economic ideas, but they never guessed that putting hundreds of thousands of Iraqis out of work would really piss them off.
Fortunately for the neocons, they don't have to live with the results of their stupendous failure.
If you want your site to be indexed well by everyone, use a freaking <title> tag!!! I run a site that attempts to auto-spider submitted links, and there are so many sites out there that have an article titled Man Saves Dog from Burning House but the page ends up being indexed as "Faraway County News Online" because they have the same title set for every page on their site. Also, now that many news sources require registration, a lot of articles are indexed as "Please Register" or something like that. (The news sources have a special rule set up so that Google can still index them.)
While Google has the resources to create custom title scrapers for every site, I've resorted to blacklisting their domains.
But have you seen those people who express viewpoints on the left on Fox? I couldn't imagine a more mousy, pathetic representation of the left in this country. Get Al Franken on Fox, then O'Reilly will REALLY have some competition.
What's the deal, Taco? Did you just try to invent a new twist on the pop-up, pop-under?
...and more importantly, did he patent it? :-)
/. (I use this one for work, and need all the crap turned on most of the time.)
I thought it was opening new windows in Netscape 7.1 just on mouse-over (I also was sure I wasn't clicking the ads.) I guess I'm stupid; because they took the new tact, I subscribed just to get rid of the BS.
Didn't work. Only 1st 10 page views per day have ads blocked, and none of the comments pages by default block ads.
Guess I need to set up a new profile with no JS, no Java, no images, etc. just to surf
Xinhua is also known as "The People's Daily", a publication of the Beijing government. What newspaper could be more biased against America and the rest of the West than Xinhua? Even the "New York Times" is not so wretchedly disgusting.
I dislike Google news for its anti-American bias and for its favoritism towards H-1Bs. (More than 20% of the Google workforce in Silicon Valley had foreign citizenship in 2002.)
Let's give Yahoo News a try.
ANSWER is not pro-Bathist
Yes, they are very much pro-Baath party.
Anyway, the marches were not pro-ANSWER, they were anti-war.
Let's be specific here. There were events which, no doubt, were not organized by Answer. I'm sure you can scrounge one up if you look hard enough. But the vast majority of the events were organized by Answer.
I didn't protest, but if I had, I would have been protesting to represent my opinion, which isn't anti-war, but is anti-unnecessary-war.
If you had chosen to march at an Answer event, then you would have been marching in support of Answer's agenda, whether that was your intention or not. I'm sure lots of naive but well-meaning people got roped into being totalitarian socialists for a day in that manner.
Invading Iraq was a foolish idea that only naive ivory-tower neocons could fall in love with.
That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the responsibility of the news media to provide context with their stories, and how the philosophy of "objective journalism" makes that impossible. If you want to spin off into a "BUSH SUCKS" rant, please do it in a reply to somebody else's comment.
I write in my journal
its the age old saying "if you dont like it, leave"
it pisses me off, like really pisses me off to hear all these reporters writing about this crap. Google is a company, who can do as they please within the law. What difference is it if they want to show more conservative news?
if current news is conservative with all the beheadings & terrorism, then what's non-conservative? Public Masturbation? Slashdot Flames?
IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) I believe that google can filter search results, news, and images for all I care.. if I dont like it, I'll go to yahoo, aj, teoma, hotbot, dogpile..you get the picture.
that's the whole point of competition!!
Since Google CEO as well as Yahoo CEO endorsed John Kerry for President.
ANSWER is not pro-Baathist. They are socialist. That does not make them pro-Baathist. Also, marching against invading Iraq does not make someone pro-Saddam. It makes one anti-war-with-Saddam.
You can criticize that position. That would be an honest criticism, unlike your current "straw man" argument.
I agree that ANSWER organized the marches. What I am saying is that the marches were an alliance of disparate organizations, all with their own separate agendas, who came together to protest on one issue. How hard can that be for you to understand? How many times and in how many ways do I have to say it?!
"I'm sure lots of naive but well-meaning people got roped into being totalitarian socialists for a day in that manner."
Baseless dirty innuendo.
"Invading Iraq was a foolish idea that only naive ivory-tower neocons could fall in love with.
That's not what we're talking about."
You brought it up, by ranting wild-eyed about communist pro-Baathist protestors, who you falsely claim turned out in small numbers. Ultimately, those tens of millions of peace marchers, who filled the streets of cities around the world, who you snidely deride as pro-Baathist and communist sympathizers, were right. They were right! The war was a stupid idea thought up by small minds living in ivory towers, people who had no understanding of history or even simple cause-and-effect.
Hell freezes over when the first neocon steps forward and admits to a mistake.
Anyway, I agree with the other poster. Your rant about journalistic balance is just an effort to express your view that liberals need to get hammered on more.
If you didn't want to talk about the war, you shouldn't have expressed your stupid ideas of what the protesters were trying to accomplish.
Its site, not 'sight' :). And I dont think its completely liberal at all. Just today, One of the items on the front page is "Rise in GOP Numbers May Impact Elections"
ANSWER is not pro-Baathist. They are socialist.
Sigh. You keep saying that, but it doesn't make it true. "Iraq has done absolutely nothing wrong." "The Baath party is the legitimate government of the state of Iraq." And here's my personal favorite: "The Iraqi people have more reason to invade the US than the US has to invade Iraq! At least Iraq isn't capitalist!" All statements made on the record by members of the International Answer steering committee.
International Answer is a pro-Baathist organization. Their purpose was to demonstrate support for the Iraqi Baath regime --the illegitmate, illegal regime, mind you.
Also, marching against invading Iraq does not make someone pro-Saddam.
Saying things like, "Saddam provides free education and health care. What has Bush done?" makes someone pro-Saddam.
I agree that ANSWER organized the marches. What I am saying is that the marches were an alliance of disparate organizations, all with their own separate agendas, who came together to protest on one issue.
You just contradicted yourself, I think. Which is it? Were they Answer marches or not?
How many times and in how many ways do I have to say it?!
You can say it as many different times using as many different words as you like. It won't make it so. I'm sorry, but you were duped. You were used. You were co-opted by somebody with insidious motives.
Well, okay, not you personally, since you've said repeatedly that you did not participate. But others who continue to insist to this day that they were marching against war, or in favor of abortion rights, or for a free Palestine, or whatever their personal wishlist might have been were actually marching in vocal support for the dictator of Iraq.
You brought it up, by ranting wild-eyed about communist pro-Baathist protestors, who you falsely claim turned out in small numbers.
LOL! That's hilarious. It reminds me of the old joke: "This food is terrible," he says. "Yes," she agrees, "and such small portions."
The biggest pro-Saddam marches of 2003 had, by reliable estimates, a few tens of thousands of participants. These are very small numbers considering that more people than that turn out to watch your average Orioles game.
Ultimately, those tens of millions of peace marchers, who filled the streets of cities around the world, who you snidely deride as pro-Baathist and communist sympathizers, were right.
They were right? Iraq never did anything wrong? They were right? Iraq was a sovereign state with a legitimate government? They were right? The Iraqi regime should have been allowed to continue committing mass murder on a global scale?
Tell me again how you're not pro-Saddam. I'm not seeing it.
The war was a stupid idea thought up by small minds living in ivory towers...
It happens every time. They start out calm and reasonable, then their hate starts to leak out. Next thing you know, they're ranting about how it's all a big conspiracy concocted by Karl Rove and Halliburton. You guys just can't keep your big ol' crazy bottled up, can you?
If you didn't want to talk about the war, you shouldn't have expressed your stupid ideas of what the protesters were trying to accomplish.
"If you didn't want to talk about my insane conspiracy theories, you shouldn't have mentioned cupcakes!"
Whatever, dude.
I write in my journal
I remember another pro-baathist group... Now what were they called... oh, yes, the United States Government.
This is a Radcon technique, to assert something without proof until it is believed to be a fact. They have learned Madison Avenue's tricks rather well and use them to advantage. Liberals would do well to take note and begin playing by the same rules.
The poster should be asked to provide proof for such a statement. The poster should also be reminded that when being asked for proof of his statements that he not switch the topic, as he does in the last paragraph by equating an attack on ivory-tower neocons to an attack on our President. Another Radcon technique to learn from, by the way.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
This is a Radcon technique, to assert something without proof until it is believed to be a fact.
"Without proof?" Remove yourself from under your rock and open your eyes. Emerge blinking into the light of day. There's a whole world out there, ya dumbass.
By the way, is "radcon" another word like "neocon," a modern-day slur? Why don't you just cut right to the chase and call me an uppity nigger?
The poster should be asked to provide proof for such a statement.
How about this? How about you get off your lazy ass and go read? How about you go take responsibility for yourself and get informed? You think Answer is just the bee's knees? Then you go read their press releases for yourself. But remember, you're looking for information that they try really hard to conceal here. You're going to have to read more than just the topic sentence of every paragraph. You're going to have to get down to the stuff where they say that the Baath government of Iraq was better than the government of the United States because at least the Iraqi government wasn't capitalist. That kind of thing.
You've got responsibilities here. If you want to sit there on your ass and say, "Your statements conflict with my prejudices, therefore you are obviously wrong," go right ahead. But don't be smug about it. At least be honest with yourself. At least admit that you're just cramming your head right back under that rock because your own little illusions about the world are oh so much more comforting than all those scary facts.
I write in my journal
Ba'athists are socialists. The Ba'ath Party's motto is Wahdah, Hurriyah, Ishtirrakiyah, which means "Unity, Freedom, Socialism".
Slashdot is NEVER biased. Neither is NPR, BBC, CNN, NY Times, etc., etc., etc., etc. Half the non-tech story postings by moderators here are blathering rants about "Republican," "capitaliams," and "American" this and that.
Another irrelevant story, my visits to Slashdot are getting less and less frequent.
All statements made on the record by members of the International Answer steering committee.
A link would be nice.
Saying things like, "Saddam provides free education and health care. What has Bush done?" makes someone pro-Saddam.
A link would be nice.
The biggest pro-Saddam marches of 2003 had, by reliable estimates, a few tens of thousands of participants. These are very small numbers considering that more people than that turn out to watch your average Orioles game.
That's a lie.
200,000+ protested in Manhattan.
"In Rome, between 1 million and 3 million people turned out, according to police officials and protest organizers; in London, between half-million and 1 million; in Berlin, a half-million."
They were right? Iraq never did anything wrong? They were right? Iraq was a sovereign state with a legitimate government? They were right? The Iraqi regime should have been allowed to continue committing mass murder on a global scale?
I'll take your questions in order: Yes. I disagree with that statement. Who is "they"? Yes on sovereign, but not legitimate. Who is "they"? Your last question is a straw man. Iraq didn't commit mass murder on a global scale, unless you're including the Iran-Iraq war, which was a long time ago, when Saddam was our ally.
Now that I've caught you in a lie, what do you have to say for yourself? Are you embarrassed?
At long last, have you no shame?
So what?
Russian and Chinese Communists were bitter enemies for decades. All socialists do not believe in the same things, just like all Communists didn't believe in the same things.
An interesting test -- which I don't think we can perform -- would be to somehow repeat this test for multiple recent politically polarizing political figures, using variants of the their name. I suspect the results will be the same for candidates with similar party popularity ratings. For example, I suspect Mr. Clinton might not suffer from this skew, but Al Gore would.
Possible Searches
Former President Clinton as:
Clinton
Mr. Clinton
Bill Clinton
President Clinton
Bubba
Senator Hillary Clinton
Senator Clinton
The First Lady
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Former Vice President Al Gore:
Vice President Al Gore
Mr. Gore
Gore
Algore
President George W. Bush:
President George W. Bush
President Bush
Mr. Bush
Bush
Dubya
The debate would be which name is most biased. Some are obvious, others aren't so clear.
Beware: I believe all are created equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
A link would be nice.
You want a link to my "International Answer press releases" file folder?
200,000+ protested in Manhattan...
Double-check your figures. Answer said 250,000. NYPD said 50,000.
"In Rome, between 1 million and 3 million people turned out, according to police officials and protest organizers; in London, between half-million and 1 million; in Berlin, a half-million."
Given that the numbers initially reported by CNN were so completely wrong --off by a factor of five! --how much do you trust these numbers gathered from overseas?
Iraq didn't commit mass murder on a global scale, unless you're including the Iran-Iraq war, which was a long time ago, when Saddam was our ally.
The Holocaust deniers have found a new hobby.
Now that I've caught you in a lie, what do you have to say for yourself?
Oooh. Yeah, you're a real badass all right. Digging up refuted numbers with Google like that. You rocked my world, baby.
I write in my journal
First, there's a public trust that goes with being the No. 1 company in any media field. As I wrote two years ago in a story that praised Google, the public is drawn to Google because it is fair, aboveboard, and won't accept secret payments for keyword searches and other payola that's now routine in the search industry. Google is holding itself out as an honest search company ("do no evil").
Second, the rights issue is irrelevant. Google News itself says it's trying to be fair and balanced, and if it isn't, it has to go back and look at its algorithms (that's what Google News' chief scientist told me this morning).
They're trying to get it right. Now they just have to figure out how to get there.
jd lasica (the article's author)
Double-check your figures. Answer said 250,000. NYPD said 50,000.
OK, I double-checked my figures and found out that, Twirlip, you are lying again. NYPD counted more than 200,000 people in the New York march.
Given that the numbers initially reported by CNN were so completely wrong --off by a factor of five! --how much do you trust these numbers gathered from overseas?
A lot more than I trust your numbers. You said, "The biggest pro-Saddam marches of 2003 had, by reliable estimates, a few tens of thousands of participants." You were off by a factor of 100.
"The Holocaust deniers have found a new hobby."
Baseless innuendo from a serial liar. Somebody stop Twirlip, before he lies again.
NYPD counted more than 200,000 people in the New York march.
Nope. Those initial reports turned out to be erroneous.
Listen, let me try to explain this as simply as I can, okay? You are quoting a news story which was subsequently corrected. Okay? Does that make sense to you? Do you understand the words?
You were off by a factor of 100.
In point of fact, the numbers reported by Answer were greatly exaggerated. They were not correct. You are quoting them as if they are correct and then accusing me of having them wrong. That's backwards.
Baseless innuendo from a serial liar.
Baseless? You said that the Iraqi regime didn't commit mass murder on an international scale! You plainly denied the truth! Baseless my ass.
I write in my journal
I didn't realize that "backlinks" are inherently conservative.
Check out this other article about Google News that was posted today. Looks like they have more than algorithms to blame for their bias.
Google News Stonewalling Independent Media
looks like google's credo may just be a sugar coating.
seems they're human after all.
ôó
That's what Google is when it comes to Maltese news sites. They prefer pro-labour sites such as maltastar.com, di-ve.com over other sites such as maltarightnow.com etc.
I think they are communists in hiding..
"a potential conservative bias in the site's algorithm" ...you say that like it's a bad thing.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
Perhaps, but whereas the typical American conservative puts that fulcrum over here:
^
An American liberal's typical fulcrum position is more like:
^
But averaging over the whole world, and not just US, a typical moderate's fulcrum ends up here:
^
Furthermore, the true left end of that scale is about two inches beyond <--that end of your monitor. Not to mention that, in reality, these are not two scales on a line, but hundreds flying out in all directions. And none of the democrat/republican, conservative/liberal, news provider, true/false, or your personal scales approach alignment except superficially and with ulterior goals.
If there's one damn thing people in this country need to learn, it's that politics has more than two sides. Ever read what FAIR has to say about the names you put on the left side of your scale? "The Media" have their biases, but they're no more liberal or conservative than Henry VIII was consubstantionist.
As anyone actually verified their affirmation, rather then bowing blindly to the headline?
My usage of google news contradicts their findings entirely. Furthermore, if you look for the full name of both candidates now, you'll see 95% negative stories on both counts.
If you simply look at Kerry or Bush, then it's definitely pro-Kerry land.
yeah, yeah offtopic maybe, but debunking a stupid theory
=1000101
Listen, let me try to explain this as simply as I can, okay? You are quoting a news story which was subsequently corrected. Okay? Does that make sense to you? Do you understand the words?
You have provided no corroborating information or link. No link = no credibility. Provide information to back up your assinine opinions or STFU.
In point of fact, the numbers reported by Answer were greatly exaggerated. They were not correct. You are quoting them as if they are correct and then accusing me of having them wrong. That's backwards.
Wrong, I quoted CNN, which reported that the information came from the NYPD. Provide corroborating information to back up your assinine opinions or STFU.
Baseless? You said that the Iraqi regime didn't commit mass murder on an international scale! You plainly denied the truth! Baseless my ass.
Your opinion. Back it up with corroborating information or STFU.
No link = no credibility.
LOL! I guess we really do live in the Internet age now.
Wrong, I quoted CNN, which reported that the information came from the NYPD.
Yes, information that was later reported as grossly exaggerated --for the first 24 hours NYPD press relations just passed on Answer's number instead of giving their own estimate.
Back it up with corroborating information or STFU.
Translation: "I like my head right where it is, thank you very much. I prefer to leave it crammed up my ass, and I will thank you to quit expecting me to pay attention to the world around me."
Whatever you say, man. Whatever you say.
I write in my journal
"In newspaper newsrooms, editors often go to great lengths to achieve a semblance of balance in coverage of the two major candidates for president?". Replace "often" with "sometimes", and you would have a more accurate statement.