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Comment by lukev | Hacker News Reader

I would agree with you, except it's not one company or person gaming google. Thousands of different internet users have linked his name to the gag site. The reason it's at the top is that it legitimately IS the center of the web of links for the keyword "Santorum." The links driving the popularity of the site are not from content farms or SEO networks, but legitimate blogs, tweets and articles. It's not a result of SEO gaming, but a genuine internet-wide smear campaign (which of course is reflected on Google).

So the only motivation Google would have for penalizing the site is that it is the result of a smear campaign. And that sets a very dangerous precedent - for Google to identify and penalize sites based on intent or message would be censorship much worse than just allowing their algorithm to run its course.

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Google already states its intention to tune its SERPs so that they answer the questions users likely intend to pose when they type a search in. Google is already in the business of judging search intent.

The "dangerous precedent" you're talking about was set by the Google web spam team a long time ago.

Algorithmically, sure, that's their goal. Manual intervention is another kettle of fish entirely.

The "dangerous precedent" you're talking about was set by the Google web spam team a long time ago.

Yep. If you wanted to look at one particular event, several years ago a major Nazi site ranked #1 for [Jew], because the people who care about [Jew] and were early adopters on the Internet happened to be Nazis. Google, at the time, refused to hand-edit that, and instead put PSA AdWords ads against the SERP for [Jew] saying "While we're certainly not Nazis, the algorithm decrees that the most relevant result for this search is, regrettably, a Nazi site." [Edit to add: Wow, the page did not linkrot: http://www.google.com/explanation.html ]This was a deeply controversial result internally and externally at the time.

Google 2012 is not Google 2002. Results which would get mentioned on the nightly news get fixed, period.

I concede immediately that I'm oversimplifying the issue. Google doesn't keep the "problem" Santorum result at the top of the SERP simply because they don't like Rick Santorum.

They're also (perhaps mostly) doing it to keep themselves out of the news, since the prevailing meme about that SERP now is "oh well, that's how the Internet works" and the result of a manual intervention would be a flood of news stories about an intervention Google probably doesn't want everyone knowing they do regularly.

It still ranks 3rd for the term 'jew', right after 'jew watch', which I assume is a hate site.

>Results which would get mentioned on the nightly news get fixed, period.

I can't think of a single publication or media outlet that hasn't covered Santorum's "Google problem".

I'm not sure whether he is right ,but I think that's his point(ie he believes that most similar problems get special tweaking and Santorum doeesn't for whatever reason)

Google 2012 is not Google 2002. Results which would get mentioned on the nightly news get fixed, period.

I disagree. We certainly like to fix bad results, but not manually. There's a very narrow range of things Google is willing to do manually in search. One of them is taking action on sites that are found to have violated the webmaster guidelines, but banning a result from a query just because it's embarrassing isn't something we do.

For instance, in that example you cite, jewwatch.com is still at number 2 for [jew].

Well, I (of course) cannot speak for the general google using population, but the few times I have ever googled santorum it has been to show people the gag results.

That's the only reason anybody I know that has ever googled "Santorum" also.

And seriously, given that The Daily Show has pumped this gag several times (the Mitt Romney v. Santorum chocolate box thing last night being the latest), with its millions and millions of viewers, to say nothing of all the other publicity that this gag has gotten, I think it's reasonable to say that this "gag" -- the collective redefinition of the word Santorum in response to perceived bigotry -- is actually a bigger deal than Rick Santorum the (fringey, extreme, minor) Republican politician.

That would likely change if Santorum actually began to be a plausible contender for the presidential nomination, but that's extremely unlikely.

I think the maximum response from Google appropriate to this issue would be one of those explanatory disclaimers in the sidebar, like they put next to the photoshopped gorilla photo results when you image-searched for Michelle Obama.

You might want to read up on the developments of the last 24 hours.

Santorum has gone from being a fringe minor candidate to being the last conservative standard bearer with a shot. It may be temporary, but he lost the Iowa caucus by 8 votes (ie, essentially tied it).

In 1980, Reagan, the conservative, narrowly lost Iowa to George H. W. Bush, the "establishment" Republican.

I do know about the Iowa caucus outcome, but I don't think it says much about Santorum's chance of becoming the Republican party nominee.

Now if Santorum somehow went on to win, or even do well, in South Carolina, New Hampshire, Florida, and then several more states, then I'd be proved incorrect and at that point Mr. Santorum would probably be a bigger deal than grody-substance santorum. And, perhaps, Google's top search result might even organically change. But that's still exceedingly unlikely.

Not that I place too much stock in arbitrary futures markets, especially with regard to democratically-conducted elections, but Intrade's numbers are historically more predictive than what Iowa's ~120,000 Republican caucus-goers choose:

http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=69090...

So that leads to the question of why Bing is giving similar results.

I'm not disputing the fact that the "problem" link landed at the top of [santorum] organically and algorithmically. Of course it did. Google didn't stick it at the top of the SERP.

But Google does police SERPs for shenanigans like this, and is deliberately not touching this one (for any of a variety of reasons, most of them not ideological).

All it takes is for Bing to be a little more lax about policing its SERPs for it to have the same result.

I consider the official definition of the word "Santorum" to be on SpreadingSantorum.com, and I suspect that many other people do as well. Why should Google try to project an alternate reality, just because Rick doesn't like it?

Didn't Google kill the 'miserable failure' google bomb of years ago?

If I were Google's team I would kill this just because it looks very bad for Google. Let's assume Santorum goes on to win the Republican Primaries and then the Presidency. Is President Santorum going to be receptive or agressive if someone from Google (or the search industry in general) turns up on their doorstep?

It's the sort of thing that stays with people for a long time, rightly or wrongly.

This isn't a plea to treat all potential presidents with kid gloves, it's a plea to make sure that pranks against public figures of all kinds are squashed once they become known.

If I were Google's team I would kill this just because it looks very bad for Google.

killing it would probably look even worse, as google would be attacked for censorship.

also, the site in question comes up first on bing, yahoo, and duckduckgo.

I just searched "Santorum" on DDG, and every result for the first few screens is in fact about Rick Santorum the politician and not about that disgusting definition.

Huh, I did this just now and it's the top result.

Screencapped: https://img.skitch.com/20120105-x7fb17is53yx99pw61bfur6g57.j...

edit: Ah ha, it only shows up if you have safe search off.

Maybe Google should follow suit and flag the "santorum" site as requiring safe search. It does focus on sexual content, after all, and this way they don't have to tweak their algorithm.

> Didn't Google kill the 'miserable failure' google bomb of years ago?

From what I recall, that googlebomb is widely believed to have been "defused" algorithmically, by devaluing anchor text which didn't match the target page at all (e.g, "miserable failure" didn't appear on GWB's page). Those measures only really defused googlebombs to unsuspecting sites; they wouldn't help for sites which are intentionally trying to rank for a term that they are relevant for!

The "miserable failure" bomb was a different issue that exposed a problem with their algorithm, which was associating search terms with a web page even though that page had nothing to do with the keywords. In this case the search term and web page are sympatico.

> Is President Santorum going to be receptive or agressive if someone from Google (or the search industry in general) turns up on their doorstep?

So Google should start manually tweaking sites supporting public figures in order to garner favors from them in case they get in a position of power?

Talk about setting a bad precedent.

Please read the comment fully next time:

"This isn't a plea to treat all potential presidents with kid gloves, it's a plea to make sure that pranks against public figures of all kinds are squashed once they become known."

Why stop at pranks against public figures?

> This isn't a plea to treat all potential presidents with kid gloves, it's a plea to make sure that pranks against public figures of all kinds are squashed once they become known

You're still missing the point. It should not be up to the search engine to do that: just let the search engine reflect what the web thinks.

Your argument is that google should kowtow to power?

No thanks.

Also please read the comment fully: "This isn't a plea to treat all potential presidents with kid gloves, it's a plea to make sure that pranks against public figures of all kinds are squashed once they become known."

My argument is that search engines of all stripes shouldn't allow themselves to host public pranks. That itself is a bad precedent.

I don't think Google should censor their search results to get on the good side of a politician. Google's mission is to organize information, not to satisfy lawmakers.

Another example to read the comment fully: "This isn't a plea to treat all potential presidents with kid gloves, it's a plea to make sure that pranks against public figures of all kinds are squashed once they become known."

Organising information is one thing - allowing pranksters to prank public figures is something else.

We might all laugh because we don't share the targets politics - but one day it will happen to someone we do support or care about.

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