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Is Santorum's "Google Problem" a Google Problem?
theodp writes "Fortune contributor Dan Mitchell argues that GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum's 'Google problem' isn't Google's problem at all. 'The fact that searching for 'santorum' puts the profane, anti-Rick Santorum site SpreadingSantorum.com (NSFW) at the top of Google's search results,' insists Mitchell, 'is not an example of a "Google bomb," despite the widespread use of that term to describe the result.' In the same camp is Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan, who also says that Santorum has a search engine problem, not a Google problem. 'It's just that everyone fixates on Google,' Sullivan adds. Which is perhaps to be expected, since Google is the King of Search and also has ties to SpreadingSantorum creator Dan Savage, having featured the sex-advice columnist in Google's The-web-is-what-you-make-of-it Chrome ad campaign (for Savage's admirable It Gets Better Project, not SpreadingSantorum). So, considering Google's vaunted search quality guidelines, is some kind of change in order? Sullivan, while making it clear he opposes Santorum's views, nonetheless suggests Google is long overdue to implement a disclaimer for the 'Santorum' search results. 'They are going to confuse some people,' he explains, 'who will assume Google's trying to advance a political agenda with its search results.'"
...they should try winning over hearts and minds (and clicks) instead of censoring something they find politically inexpedient.
It's more an example of Internet Bullying.
http://www.beanleafpress.com
I think no one should take Savage's opinions when it comes to anti-bullying because of what he has done here. It just spreads the message, "Be tolerant of my views, but I will be completely intolerant of yours and harass you if I disagree with you."
the Santorum is surging.
It sounds as though his issue is with the site, not with Google. Google is just presenting information that exists -- it is the site that is the problem for him.
So....doesn't he know a lawyer or two to address the site in question?
Santorum's biggest issue is not Google but his political policies. He appeals to a very small population of rural conservative religious voters. He has zero appeal to moderate republicans which means he could never get elected. I mean the fact that a washout like Mitt Romney is leading just lets you know how awful the Republican candidates are.
"Sullivan, while making it clear he opposes Santorum's views, nonetheless suggests Google is long overdue to implement a disclaimer for the 'Santorum' search results. 'They are going to confuse some people,' he explains, 'who will assume Google's trying to advance a political agenda with its search results.'""
If Google _were_ to include a disclaimer, it would be pushing a political agenda. Unless the disclaimer was something like: "The search results below may indicate that the candidate of your choice is so hopelessly clueless about the web that they are unable to grab the top search result for their own name." Unless of course the Luddites now have a political party....
Rick Santorum has chosen, for whatever reason, to make gay marriage a centerpiece of his campaign. That's fine, and it certainly gets him a lot of mileage with the far right. But it also comes with a downside. When you chose to single out a particular group as your enemy, you're going to have to deal with them fighting back. And if humor is one of the few weapons they have, you can expect a lot of jokes. So man up and get over yourself. It's not like Dan Savage was the one who started this fight.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It is not a search engine's responsibility to police our neologisms. Santorum is a word now used by the common public, and it requires no editorializing by third parties. As the original article points out:
The news is better for searches for Rick Santorum's full name, rather than just the word "santorum." In that case, his official site ranks tops.
So in other words, if I'm looking for a person, I write the person's name in and find the person. If I'm looking for a thing, I type said thing in and find it.
For example, would anybody be annoyed if a google search of the word "houston" showed Houston, TX as the first hit, instead of Whitney Houston?
Now as to why Santorum and santorum came to be connected is another matter. But that's something for a different conversation, which the columnist fails to grasp.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
If 90% of the websites say bad things about Santorum, and that's what 90% of the results show... where is the problem? We aren't allowed to have online activism now?
I think to have this issue in proper perspective it helps to Santorum's original words which started his conflict with Savage:
http://www.rotten.com/library/sex/sodomy/santorum/
You have to ask yourself, how would you feel if someone said such things about your sexuality/how you to relate to those you love.
Santorum wouldn't be in this situation if he hadn't pissed off the online community. His hateful, provincial views are completely at odds with most of the younger generations who are able to freely spread ideas and news about villains like him. Santorum caught on as slang to publicly shame this man. As most here know, Savage had his contest to fit a proper insult to the guy. He deserves no sympathy and should realize how rational the hatred and criticisms of him are. The Google results are purely symptomatic. Conservatives in America should realize how viscous people outside of their base are growing to their views outside and stop making excuses.
If people don't know how the internet searching works, it's not Googles job to fix it, this is a pebkac issue.
Rick Santorum is racist, sexist, and homophobic; he is in favor of teaching religious dogmatism in public schools. He should be exposed and publicly humiliated.
What I find disgusting is that the mainstream media talks about his poll results but never criticizes his political views.
http://ratetees.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/santorum-frothy-t-shirt.jpg
I'd expect to see this "problem" go away as a result of Google changing the algorithm just as they did to make "miserable failure" no longer have Bush the Lesser's official White House bio as its top result.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
At least, that's the basic idea behind both Google and other engines: show results that aggregate the opinions or outlook of many people. Authoritative links are ones which many people use, useless links are one that no one uses.
The whole thing with Santorum is that, actually, there is a very large segment of people that despise what he stands for. This group is at least competing with (if not more powerful than) the population of people that think he's a sane politician worth listening to.
The disconnect here is mass media. According to the rules they have adopted, candidates are to be taken seriously when they hit a certain (small) proportion of support, at least if they are right-wing candidates, and open mockery or confrontation are simply not done. Hence, Santorum is a "real candidate" and shouldn't have this level of opposition.
But that's not reality. I agree: a disclaimer would implicitly say that the voice of the people is political... which is rather obvious and useless, since it's always true.
SpreadingSantorum.com has nearly 16k +1's. Obviously the site is considered more popular or useful than Rick Santorum's own site. The search algorithm is correct. Nothing to see here. Move along.
I dunno, I think the problem is a Rick Santorum's Problem. It's because of Rick Santorum's obsession with gay people and banning gay sex. Maybe Rick Santorum should get off his soap box. And since Rick Santorum is against gay marriage obviously those people are going to be active against him along with others that fear is rise to power.
SpreadingSantorum predates It Gets Better, so this doesn't look like a causal link.
I don't think Google should do anything at all. Why should Santorum get special treatment? The already provide SafeSearch, and TFA proposes setting it to "strict" if you don't want to get results like this.
See also: Dan Savage on this.
If someone on the conservative Right had come up with a scatological term for "Kennedy" (say, "the sound that an government benefit check makes when it gets deposited in your mailbox") or "Pelosi" (you know, Pelosi, that thing growing along your gum line that you have to keep fiddling with), then Google long ago would have modified the algorithm or put up a disclaimer. (Not to mention the mainstream media's scathing dissent against said Republican, whereas Savage gets a wink and a free pass...) Because Santorum is such a tool, no one - least of all liberal minded technologists - is going to bend over backwards to help him out. So is Google meant to lead us to an objective trove of information? Savage's outrageousness has put real pressure on the matrix....
Vote for Santorum in the primaries. The Republicans will self destruct, for this one election cycle, under the burden of championing the hate for women and gays that Santorum dresses up as religious freedom. He is unelectable outside his base support group.
This issue has nothing to do with Google, or search. The word santorum has been redefined in a good chunk of the popular to mean what it now means. Rick Santorum is the secondary meaning of the phrase.
Google is accurately reflecting the popular culture and language evolution that has already occurred.
After reading the heading, I was poking around the internet, and I'm aghast to find there is a man, a CONGRESSMAN, no less, named after this vile substance!
Eww... GROSS!!! Have these Repulsivecans NO SHAME?!? DISGUSTING!!!
So if I'm a presidential candidate, any search for my last name should go to me? That's fucking ridiculous. The internet is a big place that includes THE WORLD, I could see there being a problem if Rick Santorum was the ONLY Santorum on the planet though this is not the case. Because someone has a last name doesn't mean they are entitled to the top results. That wouldn't even work.
So, it seems that everyone else has forgotten to link Spreading Santorum in the article, so I'll do it here.
It's not that Santorum has a Google problem, it's that Santorum has a bigotry problem, and lots of us are participating in the solution - which is to make it VERY public that he's a homophobic slime.
It's kind of like the "vote for the crook, it's important" publicity in the '91 Louisiana gubernatorial election. At least Duke was a former grand wizard of the KKK, Santorum is CURRENTLY doing everything he can do to harm a minority part of the population - and this frothy mix is running for President!
So I fully support the fact that the word "santorum" now means "the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex." Sure, it's distasteful. But it's important.
Rick Santorum's problem is not because of Google or any other search engine.
His problem is that he is an odious little tyke who espouses the very worst views of radicalised "Christianity". He is just as great a danger to freedom and decency as the radicalised Muslim clerics, for much the same reasons - indeed, his obscenely misogynistic rhetoric sounds awfully like that of the "Mad Mullahs".
Santorum is like a very small, smelly turd. He probably is a well meaning neo-fascist, without even realizing it.
He probably believes in a god, for real, and thinks that is a good idea that others should follow.
I cannot help but think that Santorum is like a very small, smelly turd.
My apologies for that.
So, it is not number one but well above the fold on Google's main competitor. Even if Google intervenes here, it will remain near the top.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb
He can reverse this. I remember when Apple's lack of Flash support was in the news, and Apple successfully drowned out much of the negative press by including dense concentrations of the word "Flash" (referring to the camera) in their press releases. They successfully made searches for "iphone flash" show links to their pages rather than to blogs complaining about the iphone not having Flash.
I personally feel that search engine manipulation is a problem, and while I commend Google's position on their neutrality - I feel some precedence should be given when it involves peoples names. If you have a unique name and somebody blogs bad things about you, you are stuck with those results *for life* every time someone Google's you.
Because of Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act, the material has been found to be defamatory by a court, as evidenced by a court order, limiting such an option to only those in power, or those who can afford a decent lawyer. It's evil.
The "miserable failure" thing was abusing Google's algorithm. It pointed out something faulty with Google's algorithm, and they corrected it. I personally thought it was hilarious but I can't argue that the underlying mechanism that allowed it to be posted didn't need correcting. It was, in effect, an exploit.
The santorum thing is totally different. Dan Savage created a page with meaning that other people linked to for legitimate reasons. It deserves its place at the top of the search results. There's nothing wrong with Google's algorithm and no exploit that needs correcting. The search engine is functioning correctly.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
Google simply allowed the Spreading Santorum result to rise to #1 because the site meets Google's criteria for making it to the #1 slot. It's my understanding that years ago, after the Spreading Santorum website was created, thousands (millions?) of people blogged about it, linked to it, and so on, so it rose to the top of Google when people searched the politician's name. Google is not advancing anyone's political agenda by simply allowing searches for the word "Santorum" to return results using the same ruleset that searches for any other word follow. They're simply following their own rules.
Specifically granting Santorum an exception from these rules and downgrading the site that rose to the top by following the rules would be "advancing a political agenda." Santorum's.
Of course, this is the kind of rhetoric you see everywhere in modern politics. Not advancing my political agenda is "advancing a political agenda," but advancing my political agenda is not "advancing a political agenda" but "fair and balanced reporting."
Google can do anything they want with their results, being a private company as opposed to a true "public" forum. However, that's how a lot of people view Google, and search engines in general---as neutral providers of the results of the rest of the web. I'm sure we're all familiar with the uproar when it is discovered that such-and-such a search engine is bumping certain results because they were paid off to do so. This situation would be no different. If Google grants Santorum's people a special exception and downgrades the Spreading Santorum results, that's the end of believing Google's results are fair and non-biased.
Right now Santorum's people are buying an ad on his name, obviously. Maybe Google should just remove the "ad" and the pink background from that result. Then it would be first and look just like it made it's way to first by earning that slot according to Google's ruleset. Of course that would be the equivalent of bumping certain results because Google was paid off to do so, wouldn't it?
Ultimately, this story is nothing more than people who want to control the debate getting upset that the other side is controlling the debate better than them. Google is akin to a stretch of roadside and Santorum's people are whining that Spreading Santorum staked out more, bigger political yard signs that they were able to. And now they want permission from someone to come in and rip out most of the signs so they can put up their own.
Liberty in your lifetime
Correct analysis. This is why Cain lost to Obama, by chosing Palin.
Still, it is a very risky tactic.
Palin had a "TV problem" and some suggested that "TV" was bad for her.
The fact that people can go back to e.g. Youtube and watch CBS tv reports on Palin makes it even worse for Palin and the likes, e.g. Santorum.
Katie Couric's historic interview tells it all - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nokTjEdaUGg
So, Santorum's "Google-problem" may be a variant of Palin's "tv-problem" in a way.
Every time we create an inbound link, it effects the Google rank.
You should link to http://spreadingsantorum.com/ as much as possible to ensure that Google's index stays accurate.
And because it is the best site on the 'net to learn more about Santorum.
Everyone always talks about the Google problem. SpreadingSantorum.com is also the number one result on Bing.
...in order to convince people that they are not trying to advance a political agenda with their search, they should annotate search results with comments as to which results they do not agree with politically?
I need to search for Santorum and click on the first link today!
giggity
Disclaimer - I really can't stand Santorum and I'd like to be able to vote for a Republican in the next election. But that guy actually makes Obama look good in almost every way.
That aside, I have a couple of observations:
1. Google's search results in this case aren't correct. If I was in charge of search at Google, I would be concerned that my index was too easily gamed to return improper results. And, let's face it, when people are searching for "santorum" they're not looking for something about anal sex that really has nothing to do with him.
2. I can't help but think that if somebody were gaming "obama" or "clinton" in such a manner Google would just sit back and say "we can't do anything".
Do you have ESP?
Learn to write a good clear political webpage, have your massive web savvy grassroots base link to it and ensure they write good "link" pages. .... website" - where helpers are guided via an app or main site to paste their name, photo, quote local political issues and then have it go live with a few clicks.
The more quality on topic words shared by the 'real' sites the more people will find the main site with easy search terms.
Google seems good at finding real pages, real words and seeing where links go and trying to rank them in some useful order.
Where can it all go wrong?
That massive support base just can't make web 2.0 work?
That massive support base is addicted to the new trendy walled web 2.0 sites that don't allow deep outside searching?
That massive support base was all computer generated on the cheap?
That massive support base is a bit too small and some was computer generated with real skill?
Solution:
Make a "I support
A bit like a web 2.0 profile but much more hidden tech about understanding how Google works.
Add in options on war, faith, rights, medial issues, work, pets, family ect. to ensure a wide range of 'new' sites over many hosts are auto generated.
Text, link, graphics, tag and keyword rich with just enough new info to be unique for any search engine all linking back to the main site.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
A LOT of people. Perhaps if you don't want the internet revealing that you're a huge asshole, you should try not being a huge asshole.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The home page has no keyword tag, no description tag and only 255 words of search engine readable text. It's amazing that the site ranks as well as it does.
Imagine if you are a business leader or local politician and someone with the same name as you becomes infamous in a big way.
Any local politicians named Ken Lay? How about Scott Peterson?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
While I don't really think this slander campaign is the right way to approach such a disagreement in views, it's still pretty disgusting that Urban Dictionary offers the definition as a coffee mug. Maybe some people have some pretty awful coffee every morning, but I don't think calling it a byproduct of anal sex makes the coffee any better.
Nixon ran and lost. Then he ran and became President.
That deficit may be a threat to the financial stability of America....but America is far from the "beacon of freedom" that Bush claimed it was. Santorum wants to criminalize gay sex. He wants to put people in jail for having consensual adult sex with one another. Incidentally, he wants the same punishments for straight people who perform sex acts (completely consensual and completely adult) of which HE disapproves!
THAT is the greater threat to liberty, you ignorant dolt.
given 2 choices in a seach, the standard Rick Santorum site and the "other" site lots of people will find the anti-Santorum site more interesting. Supporters are going to know they want the candidates site but those just surfing for something to read are going to gravitate to the more _colorful_ spreadingsantorum.com. I think it's human nature.l
As it stands, Santorum just has to continue to purchase Google ad space so his candidacy site is top on the results page. Or continue to show why people should not vote for you.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I'd imagine that google has considered tag clouds far more deeply than Fortune's Dan Mitchell, well frankly I'd imagine they prototyped it even.
I'd further expect they vetoed tag clouds on the basis that any tag cloud they might produce can be better implemented by assigning the correct weighting for results.
In fact, you'll recall that google once offered "similar" results, which provided exactly what Dan Mitchell wants, but I'd imagine Google has good reason when they removed it.
In short, Google has already spent millions on the algorithm exploring exactly this algorithm via their similar button, which they ultimately discarded.
Btw, you'll also notice that Rick Santorum's wikipedia page comes up fairly high no matter how hard we try creating additional frothy content top push it down. Isn't this indicative that google has done a very good job identifying the two meanings of Santorum?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Over the years, the collective IQ of this bunch has gone down. Yes. This is an ad hominem attack.
The disclaimer they were talking about is mentioned near the end of the original article.
So you can see (after reading the Blogger entry) that they're not talking about merely stating that the voice of the people is political, but that the search results are "slanted" by persons gaming the system. Presumably they think their results are now game-proof enough to no longer merit such disclaimers, and that the idea that
"Santorum means the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that's occasionally the byproduct of anal sex."
is just a popular enough idea to rank highly in search results (i.e., is the "voice of the people" as you put it). Otherwise, except for nits, I agree with your comment.
"I believe and I think that the right approach is to accept this horribly created, in the sense of rape, but nevertheless, in a very broken way, a gift of human life, and accept what God is giving to you."
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
It's hard for an American President to win re-election if the economy is bad. The US economy is unlikely to be "good" by November, especially if your memories of "good" include the internet bubble of the late 90's and the housing bubble of the late 2000's.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I'm not a supporter of Rick Santorum, and I could care less what happens with Gays, so long as they keep it to themselves. I still think it's wrong to try and manipulate public view, or use dirty tricks like this. I guarantee you that if this happen in 2008 with Obama, you people would be crying Havoc! Maybe it's our primal instincts to be hypocrites, but I try to overcome them when possible.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
If there really exists a large group of biased and hateful people who agree with Santorum, eventually they might catch on and start to attack their own political enemies with this kind of slander (I know, it's not technically slander, but come on...we know what's going on).
Do you really want hate groups google-bombing your favorite celebrity-politicians? Or would you rather Google set a precedent to prevent the intentional gaming of their search results?
You might say "bring it on", but at that point Google Search becomes something else, somethng much less useful.
http://www.whitepages.com/name/Santorum/ Plenty of people named Santorum. Maybe some kids. Who are now getting bullied. Nice, Dan.
I'm a hard-core liberal, and it pisses me off what he's done. He's effectively censoring (not in the legal sense) debate because he doesn't like what someone has to say. Now that Santorum is a serious candidate, it's even worse since people are actively trying to inform themselves about the man and the first thing they're going to see is some childish prank.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
that frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter could have problems with Googles problems? Slashdot ought to have some limits on what kind of filth is allowed on news headlines.
This is what your beloved Google hypocrites do: http://cpac2012.conservative.org/sponsorship/2012-sponsors/
--
Glass
Logic does not apply here. Marriage is a sacred institution to these people, and being in the "married" club means being special. If they allow everyone in their club, it loses its exclusivity. Just like allowing black people into white country clubs, just like allowing women voting or in the workplace.
The fight does not come from them losing anything tangible or quantifiable, it comes from losing that feeling of being special.
I agree with you because I think about these things logically. I also cannot overlook divorced people who say they have changed their ways and now believe in the sanctity of marriage, because it doesn't make sense. But that's the whole point, sense is irrelevant.
That, in turn, is the basis of Santorum's argument that gay sex is no different from man-dog sex just because it's not the traditional man-woman sex. They both are outside of the "traditional" definition, and are therefore equally dirty and offensive, and should remain just as outlawed, if not just socially unacceptable. A false equivalence based on Santorum's personal beliefs. The same as claiming that Pakistan and China are un-American because they are not in America, and England is just as un-American for the same reason. Nonsense. And of course the implicit assumption that pro-American is the only patriotic value that anyone should hold.
And that's where the google-bomb started, Santorum spouting nonsense as if it were logical, and ignoring actual logic in the process.
There's no such thing as an ad hominem attack. There's the argumentum ad hominem fallacy, whereby the arguer attempts to say that the opposition is wrong because of some personal flaw. This is not that. It is a straight up attack on the man's character because of the things he's said. No ad hominems.
Santorum's problem is not that Dan Savage's page has too high a ranking. It's that "ricksantorum.com" has too low a ranking.
They're quite close. Both have PageRank of 6. Both have about 1500 inbound links. Both have Alexa traffic ranks around 35,000. A little bit more press and Santorum's own site should move up.
What if the search result for Obama pulled up something racist? Would that be an equivalent situation?
...then I would get to enjoy watching Internet videos of you having your throat slit and your head cut off.
If shit stinks, and you google "does shit stink", google is going to respond with "yes."
Don't like the truth? Sucks. Google isn't going to lie to make you look better.
What is hilarious is that by posting this article all over the internet, this guy just increased the amount of searchable content for santorum to indicate he's a frothy mix of something or other. Not to mention all the comments it is going to generate on all of the sites that aggregate it. Barbara Streisand much?
Really? You can tell a lot about me based on eight words I said on the Internet, only two of which were even mine? Wow! With your uncanny profiling skills do you make six or seven figures consulting for the feds, or something? Because that's pretty amazing!
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
On as many message boards, blogs and other websites so that it will be clear that the frothy mixture of feces and lube is not in any way related to Rick Santorum and that "santorum" is not the frothy mixture described.
Bush's "Miserable Failure" was a Google problem - the perpetrators found a way to trick Google's robots into doing that.
Santorum's "Santorum" search results aren't a Google problem, they're a "millions of people hate you enough to pass the meme along on their web pages" problem.
And after hearing Santorum criticize John McCain for not getting how useful torture is to the US military, I'd say that Dan Savage was way too kind to Santorum - the man deserves worse than what he got.
So, for anyone thinking that Google should put up a disclaimer: do you also think that Microsoft and Yahoo should do the same, since their search engines return the same results. Seems to me Rick Santorum has a "being a human ass hat problem" which has manifested itself (correctly and logically) in the various search engines.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I agree that the Savage Internet campaign may help rather than hurt Santorum win the nomination. GOP primary voters oppose gay marriage by 70%. http://www.people-press.org/2012/02/07/growing-public-support-for-same-sex-marriage/
It's hard to say, however, what effect it may have in the general election, which will include Democrats and Independents. Among all voters, opinion about gay marriage is evenly divided.
But I don't think a majority of all voters agree with Santorum that homosexuality is the same thing as the sexual abuse of dogs. Santorum's anti-gay pronouncements go far beyond the issue of gay marriage. To the extent that Savage's site exposes Santorum's extremism, it will help Obama, but I'm not convinced that most people will make the leap from anal froth to anti-gay bigotry.
There are, of course, two Stephen Colberts - one's a TV character who's a Republican, and the other's an actor, who's a liberal. One of them thinks the other is an idiot, and he's in a good position to know. But I'd take Colbert the Character over Romney, and I'd take Colbert the Actor over Obama.
This is crap.
If searching for the KKK leadership somehow , through sheer public outrage and the collective , uncoordinated effort that incited resulted in some nastiness about the KKK's views to pop up who would say Google has a problem and the KKK is being victimized?
Rick Santorum has major mental illness- that's fact, not an opinion. He's in deep denial about AGW and loudly espouses theories which are in direct conflict with physics and chemistry. His opinions on homosexuality are more of the same and in direct conflict with established psychology. It's not society's fault if Rick Santorum is a regressive denier know-nothing who through sheer ignorance supports ecocidal mass murder and homophobic viewpoints .
Given the implications of AGW upon all of us and all our children, Santorum should consider that he's getting off easy being lampooned only for his anti-scientific position on homosexuality.
Google isn't just presenting one popular site - it's presenting the fact that millions of people think Santorum is a bad enough guy to deserve being treated this way. (IMHO, he's actually worse, because he's in favor of torture as well as institutionalized homophobia.)
Also, in the US, slander and libel laws don't protect you against insults, only false malicious accusations, and public figures have far less protection against public insult than non-famous people do. This insult is even less direct than Larry Flint's cartoon insulting Jerry Falwell, which the Supreme Court held to be obviously intended as insult, not as a statement of fact.
.. last name for anyone, let alone a politician, to have.
Is the family name derived from an occupation or behavior, such as "miller" or "hunter"? :-)
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
Mitt Romney wins the Maine Republican caucuses
"The Associated Press is reporting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has won the Maine Republican caucuses to defeat rival Ron Paul by a small margin. According to Reuters, 95 percent of the votes have been counted, and Mr. Romney has 39 percent of the votes thus far with Mr. Paul currently sitting at 36 percent."
since santorums political goals are to incite hate instead of live and let live isn't it fitting he gets as good as he gives? Why are these search results a problem?
Santorum's problem is neither a Google problem nor a search engine problem; his problem is that he's fucking asshole.
The public discourse is not dominated by Google or Bing or any other index; it's dominated by what people say. Google tends to relay what people say, and it generally does not censor anything that is not an artificial manipulation by a spam network. It didn't censor "These WMD cannot be located." and it didn't censor "Did you mean 'french military defeats?'"
If people are expressing their view that Santorum is a fucking asshole, then no amount of fixes or disclaimers on Google's index will change that. Stephen Colbert will still grin and say that to him the name Santorum is synomyous with leadership - and nothing else. Bloggers and commenters will still chortle over sentences like "Romney squeezes out Santorum" or "Santorum talks himself into a lather". It's entirely his own fault, because homophobia, unlike homosexuality, actually is a choice. Being an asshole in public sometimes results in people publicly saying that you're an asshole.
who are stupid.
Of course by "publicly expressed his personal disapproval of homosexual perversions" you mean wanting to legislate discrimination into our laws and ram intolerance down our throats.
He said a bunch of stuff that offended people, and the offended people didn't just sit idle and take it. Why should he get protection from the consequences of his own speech?
"But this one goes to 11!"
a search for Santorum on ALL engines brings the offensive to the top.
Could it be that it's there because it's popular? oh heavens no! That would mean the Mr. Santorum is better known for being an offensive piece of refuse than for ANYTHING else he's ever done. How could this be? He's such an upright, kind, compassionate person of the people! BTW, I'm sure it's some other company's fault that when I spell his name in this dialogue, it becomes underlined, and the only choice given is Sanatorium!
All un-needed tech arguing aside, this is not a problem. This is what happens to douchebags when they act as such in public service, let's learn the lesson and move along.
I don't really even believe in Karma....but it seems this man has earned one hell of a Karma turd, and it's still falling on his head. He simply wants to censor it away is all.
So, are they going to be jumping on Bing and Yahoo for having that site as the top result(once you exclude paid placement and news links)?
Maybe the anti-Santorum folks should consider unintended consequences.
Like what percentage of people who look up the candidate and get Savage's page will think "Hmmm. The people who are opposed to Rick Santorum are a bunch of nasty little creeps" and be more inclined to vote for him, vs. the number who see Savage's page and think "Hmmm. Someone wrote this marvelously witty parody site and cleverly hacked the search results to get it to th e top of the search results" and be less inclined to vote for him.
How do you think the percentages work out there, over all of the country, not just the "progressive" parts?
You'll also notice that Santorum's wikipedia entry mentions Dan Savage and the neologism.
The stain of santorum is now permanent, and nothing could be more appropriate. It is an indelible scarlet letter written in santorum on the forehead of Santorum. It will never, ever go away. How seldom is there justice so perfect?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I am surprised that Google's internal filters which tend to disavow "adult" content on keywords that tend to not be "adult" in nature have not snagged this. As funny as the santorum issue is, I am not too excited to think that 5th graders around the country are researching a political candidate for their class and find this after searching Google for his name.
Moreover, I am surprised that Google doesn't differentiate between the capitalized and non-capitalized versions of the word, which would also potentially yield a better result.
I disagree that it is functioning correctly. The goal of the search engine is to provide the most relevant result set to the users. If we look at the search volume for "santorum" in Google compared to that of "rick santorum", you will see that the two are lock-step with one another. People are searching for "santorum" to find information about "rick santorum"
http://www.google.com/trends/?q=santorum,rick+santorum&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
Just 2011: http://www.google.com/trends/?q=santorum,rick+santorum&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0
The search result continues to maintain its rankings in large part due to the positive user metrics it receives from people who seek out the result to show to friends (hence the 11000 google plus one votes it has received).
I don't want my 12-year-old daughter to see that definition
Please don't perpetuate your prudery into the next generation.
Please do not dictate how I should raise my children.
Here is what is wrong with the country: The world doesn't revolve around you. You expect the rest of the world to censor things that you don't like. I don't like Rick Santorum. He is a bigoted asshole who isn't fit to lead a Sunday school kindergarten, let alone the most powerful country in the free world.
But you know what? I put up with his stupid bullshit, because that is the agreement we have here in America. He is free to say whatever he wants to. And people are free to mock his hateful views. That is one of the things that makes America a worthwhile country. We have room for everyone and their views. And it seems that a sizable number of people seem to think that Rick Santorum needs to be mocked. Don't like the content? Don't use the Internet. Nobody is forcing you to.
Also, is it that horrible to learn what anal sex is? Some people like putting their penis in other people's anus, oh no! Get over it.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If Santorum was an "ordinary human producing cogent and halfway intelligent" things to say in the first place, maybe he would get the same treatment. But when your stance is there is no difference between bestiality and homosexuality, you have to expect people aren't just going to accept that and not call you out on it.
As for proof of wanting to legislate discrimination, Santorum wants laws passed defining marriage as only between a man and a woman. That is sexual discrimination against homosexuals and no amount of spin can change that.
You also need to get out and learn a bit more. Only ignorant people would think all homosexuals "love having stuff rammed down their throats." Do you also believe all women "love having things rammed down their throats" or is your intolerance only limited to male homosexuals? I don't believe wanting equal rights for all people is the same as being an advocate for homosexuality either. But I guess if you choose to live your life in a world of only extremes of black and white, I guess anybody defending the rights of a homosexual MUST be a homosexual themselves, right?
"But this one goes to 11!"
Perhaps google engineers are "tee hee heeing" about fixing the search results to promote their agenda.
maybe?
Please explain why Dan Savage needs to be shot to death. Just because he is gay or is some other irrational fear bouncing around in that "brain" of yours in addition? Murdering people that are different from you always seems like a well though out plan.
It's always funny when leftists attack the right by trying to associate them with the same sexual perversions which they support. Like the whole "tea bagger" thing. Are liberals suggesting they're intolerant of this sexual practice?
I don't see a problem. How is this different than any word that is both a person and a thing?
Santorum (capital 'S') is a proper name. In the case of Rick Santorum, it's a person's surname.
santorum (lowercase 's') is a thing: a frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.
Hill (capital 'H') is a proper name. Faith Hill is an award winning singer.
hill (lowercase 'h') is a thing: a natural elevation of the earth's surface, smaller than a mountain.
Marriage is a sacred institution to these people, and being in the "married" club means being special.
Especially ironic when the Christian divoce rate is identical to the national average.
Marriage is sacred enough to preclude people you don't like I guess, as long as that person you don't like is someone other than your spouse.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
There is a difference between being mean to a public figure (especially a politician) and harassing just-some-kid. Rick "man-on-dog" Santorum deserves some ridicule for his absurd, and offensive, speech.
Yes, that is the definition of "satire".
Bullying, by definition, targets someone of less power or status. Satire is the mockery of a political or social figure with the intent to portray them as ridiculous.
So.. a man who is profoundly unfair in his policy-defining positions against an entire group of people wants me to understand that someone else is being unfair to him? Good luck. The entire point of SpreadingSantorum is the irony... and it's delicious.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Ironic to point out something that has been proven false.
Rick Santorum's problem is Rick Santorum's platform and politics.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Santorum doesn't have a Google Problem, America has a Santorum Problem - too much of it smeared on it's face.
No, I'm neither "liberal" nor Democrat, but this election's pretendents for GOP's nomination really look like a freak show. Seriously, if this is the best you can offer or (more importantly) agree on, than you shouldn't bitch about Obama or Hillary, you deserve them.
Troll 2.0 Fear my asocial networking!
It just goes to prove that freedom of speech does not include the freedom to avoid any repurcussions from your speech.
I'm all in favour of murderous racists and child rapists employing their freedom of speech: it makes it so much easier to track them down.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
That doesn't say ANYTHING about incest. Nothing but selection bias.
I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
Probably not as "hard" as you get when you think of Santorum, all greased up and naked, spewing vile anti-gay propaganda while you blow the living shit out of him. Am I right?
P.S. I think there is still a little Santorum around your ass from your last meeting with Darling Ricky. Better hit the showers stud.
P.P.S. You are so far in the closet I am not sure if even Tom Cruise could pull you out.
I remember reading Savage's column suggesting his recoinage of santorum (I believe it was the result of a reader competition to come up with something nasty to stick the name to) in the Onion. I thought it was a funny idea at the time and it stuck with me. A part of me giggles every time someone says Santorum.
But who'd have thought then that, a decade down the road, this goofy suggestion by a sex columnist might be standing between Santorum and a presidential run. I mean wow, that's pretty cool.
Anyhow, Google just tries to democratically measure what people are talking about on the internet. If more people associate "santorum" with a form of butt goo than with a politician, that's not Google's fault. Santorum just needs to start a campaign to get links from supportive websites to his campaign page and he can probably get that first page-rank. Even though it'll still be right above "santorum = butt goo". But, hey, that's democracy for you.
Why do you keep advocating death of people for their comments, even if they aren't consistent?
The larger issue is the message that the Internet distills and presents. Run a search on Google on any social or political topic. Look at the first page of results. There is no argument here folks, the facts speak for themselves. Do the same with Wikipedia. Go ahead..........bring up the George Bush page and the Barack Obama page. Want to see bias? It's right there in front of you. Do the same for all of the Republican candidates. You will always find some sort of "controversy" listed, but you won't find any stinging conclusions on the pages for Democrats or liberals in general. This is not a debate or argument about some conservative's subjective opinion. Anyone can replicate the results for themselves. Who controls the infrastructure of the Internet? Is more of the control in liberal northern California or in a conservative area of the Midwest? I am a researcher. I do hundreds of searches daily and use Google about 80% of the time. Even when researching topics that should have nothing to do with politics or social issues, Google presents results that give voice to liberal/progressive issues. We like to avoid assumptions whenever possible, but come on......................this is so widespread that the only conclusion an informed person can make is that there is no coincidence involved.
You may disagree with Santorum, but to compare him to a terrorist group that is responsible for the intentional deaths of hundreds (thousands?) of innocent lives is simply WAY over the top.
I did not know what Santorum was until I read the Savage article back in 2003. Then I backtracked it and learned that he was a religious zealot and bigot who was drubbed out of office. Fast forward to 2011 and I hear that he is running for President. Many LOLs ensued.
just bing the same word and it comes up.... pick on MS
...there really will be a santorum surge this Valentines. ;)
On thing is for sure, IF Santorum gets elected president, Google is going to get ONE MIGHTY PRESIDENTIAL BITCH SLAP. Remember what W did to Iraq and Hussien? That's what happens when you make the President made at you.
Amazingly while Google will remove hate speech and others from its search results, as it did earlier last year when a website used a google bomb to preach anti-Semitic philosophies, when it’s a political subject that Google does not support, Google will not retract or remove the listing. This is about information control and quality. No one searching Google for Santorum is looking for a made up definition by an anti-bullying advocate who strangely enough spends his free time bullying those who disagree with him.
As for it being a search engine problem, until Santorum announced he was running for president Bing had reduced the ranking of the website (I don’t have any data on Yahoo). Google definetly led the charge.
Google should take a lesson from the past. CNN use to dominate the news, but as it became increasingly more inaccurate and slanted it gave rise to other media outlets catering to both sidother perspectives. Since that time CNN has lost its top status. The market has a way of correcting itself.
My expectation is that the Romney consulting and marketing machine is abusing a weakness in Googles algorithms to 'fake' trending and sentiment. For a motivated group of IT professionals with $$$ to spend, I'm sure it's doable..
A few headlines I would like to see
Rick Santorum coming from behind
Rick Santorum running at the rear
Rick Santorum's back of the pack
Rick Santorum on a slick trail
If you 'Google' the topic, you'll discover that the average 12-year-old has already seen about 8,000 murders, 100,000 acts of violence, rape and aggravated assault. In fact, Children's Saturday morning programming shows 30 violent acts per hour. It's therefore not likely you'll be able to control a tsunami of that magnitude. Sad to say, your offspring, as a member of the digerati, is likely exposed to far worse than religious bigotry on a daily basis. As regards fundamentalist belief systems, which are still widely embraced throughout the word, the best thing more liberal-minded parents can do is teach children critical thinking skills. And, perhaps, remember this axiom: Children need less your ‘wise’ counsel – and more your good example. If you practice rational discourse in discussions with you child and others, you might have a fighting chance. .
Here here........ That Santorum is scare. If he becomes president, I'm sure the gays will be first to be sent away somewhere.... Next the Jews and then the non believers in his form of Christian bigotry.