In charge of truth? Google considers ranking sites on facts, not popularity

originally posted by: hutch622
Oh goody , Google gets to be judge and jury on what is easily accessible on the internet . I bet Yahoo , Bing etc are rubbing there hands together .

They already are judge and jury on what is easily accessible on the internet...

Besides, its their search tool. They can rank websites however they want to rank them.

originally posted by: BornAgainAlien
In charge of truth? Google considers ranking sites on facts, not popularity

There's several issues with this story.

Issue #1 - Russia Today, they have been publishing hoaxes lately and are a state-owned propaganda service.

Issue #2 - NewScientist as the original source. Real scientists have been criticizing the magazine for years for it's sensationalist slant and lack of staff who really know science.

Issue #3 - Google rarely officially discusses the workings of their black box, and didn't in this case. The sensationalism is based off one Cornell University computer science research paper: arxiv.org... from which NewScientist makes it's alarmist assumptions.

Issue #4 - Google has, in the past, stated that they're considering "Knowledge-Based Trust" ranking of web content for customized searches, such as Google Scholar, but never for general web-based search. (Matt Cutts)

Facts according to Google...

911 wasn't an inside job.
GMO's are there to save the world from starvation.
Chemtrails never even existed in any form.
Fracking is good for the environement.
Cancer can only be cured with chemotherapy.
EMF's are not bad for no one.

You see where this is going? No no, we wanted neutrality, we are going to get it.

I wouldn't mind if a "truth counter" would appear from each web pages or if we have the option of searching according to the truth counter but forcing on us what THEY consider the truth is a very bad idea.

a reply to: InverseLookingGlass

It's the end of Google search, at least for me.

No person looking for accurate information on anything should use Google for search.

I have used other search engines such as the duck , but for the most part google gives me what I'm looking for over other search engines.

Also they are taking steps to stay relevant: Operating Systems, ISP, Media, Robotics,Biomed, and just about every future market that is going to be relevant for us.

Its a Tech company run by Techs that like Tech foremost, versus the MS,IBM and APPLE of the world who like to follow and take less risks.

Where do you think they get their revenue anyway? It's just another form of pay for play advertising.

They clearly mark their sponsored links and keep them separate from your returned links.

That's a great idea I would support 100%. Numbers aren't everything, but they're not nothing either. I would much rather use my time on a site that could be trusted to uphold the facts than receiving false information then going away from it with the wrong idea.

They should strike a balance that weighs the "trust factor" with the number of visitors factor. Of course each subject matter should be approached differently anyway. In the end it's all about business sales, not news anyway. Not a thing would change with all of Google's business support because business depends on truth to sell product.

So, I would say that this would be a good thing. The areas of the internet that would be more greatly affected negatively would be sites filled with lies, many news sites, pretty much anything with garbage in it. That wouldn't be a bad thing. I can't forsee Google penalizing ATS although ATS has a ton of garbage in it because the good stuff far outweighs the bad stuff. This new system would essentially be a good way to eliminate the worst sites that hurt business and give a boost to the less visited sites with great content.

That's how I see it. I like the idea.

I do search engine optimization (SEO) for a living, for the past 10 years. I really do not think Google will go this route. Having good content and links will be the way to rank sites for long time. Its been this way for many years and it will be this way for many more. Changing to facts for a ranking factor will just not work for alot of particular niches and topics on the internet.

a reply to: BornAgainAlien
So what is now Google the arbiter of truth. The reality is there is no truth, for some things ya but those are basic things, like you know, grass is green and all that that seems to be a truth, as long as its not winter or fall, then grass is likely brown. As far as were power money and perception meet all for business sake politics and mass perceptions, its all pretty much fancy lies, most of which have been told for centuries. After a period of time even if you tell the most outrageous of fancy-full bull# people would believe it in time, simply because its how humans and the human mind operate and likely because they have been born raised and breed into it.

Like ThichHeaded said. Most truths are merely widely accepted opinions, and generally they serve a purpose or serve purposes. Swaying public opinions and getting the masses and herds to believe bull# is not only a big business, but its been done since before ancient Rome, so much so that it may as well be considered an art form.

But ya whats that quote by Benjamin Franklin and others..."Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see" But ya sure why not. Let Google be the arbiter of truth...That way we know the primary source of were the bull# is coming from. But given time and generations it would make for some ridiculous things, talk about massive populous worldwide cognitive dissonance on scales never seen before, more so then there is today that is.

a reply to: apoc36
Well ya that's the whole point. To flood the market with the truth and get rid of all those pesky niches and topics on the internet. And then truth will become a market onto itself, and Google would have the market cornered on truth, complete with a stock report and return on interest, who knows there may even come to be a monopoly on truth.

I dont think its going to happen even if they wanted to, things will always creep up. But it could be done.

a reply to: theMediator

Google isn't forcing anything on you, it isn't the only search engine... and they're all free.

I wish the person doing the search got to choose in which order results are listed.

I am sick of having to filter out silly websites that are not related.

Private companies trying to decide facts...

Does anyone else see this as censorship? The all knowing google overlords will decide for us what is factual? This stinks

a reply to: BornAgainAlien

I despise Google with a passion, but I feel I have to interject and add some reality to this discussion.

I work in Search Engine Optimization and web content, so I'm pretty clued-up with regard to what Google does.

This is not a move to rank all sites by some imagined fact score. This will be just one of hundreds of ranking factors, and will only impact certain sites where facts are presented as being such.

For example, this will have no impact on bloggers or forums, unless you deal in what you claim are facts.

This will be one factor in determining the value of content which directly claims to be a source of factual information. If you have a site where facts are important, and you claim that frogs are marsupials, you will be out-ranked by a similar site correctly publishing the truth. If you claim that Brad Pitt was married to Kevin Costner, while another site states that he was married to Jenifer Aniston, you will lose traffic to that other site when someone is seeking an answer to that question.

But, like I said, I loathe Google for the incredibly damaging near-monopoly it has over millions of businesses, so anything that might damage this monster is perfectly fine with me.

Perhaps I should just say that people should be using other search engines not because of this new development, but because it is entirely corrupt. It claims to want to deliver the best results to a surfer, but for almost every product you could search for it offers Amazon (or eBay) as the first result, even when that page is pathetically weak in comparison to a smaller retailer struggling to provide every minute piece of information on a page.

I can create a product page on a site for an almost completely unknown item, pack that page with information, be the first to publish it, have a hundred links into that page from other reputable sources, and I guarantee the moment Amazon (or one of Google's other favored corporations) stocks that item, all other smaller businesses will come after it.

Almost forgot to mention that Amazon pays Google millions of $'s a year in advertising, and that Google and Amazon have swapped senior staff hundreds of times over the last five years.

originally posted by: Kali74
a reply to: theMediator

Google isn't forcing anything on you, it isn't the only search engine... and they're all free.

It might not be forcing anything on the searcher, but it absolutely is forcing things on webmasters and has done since it started dictating global policy on Internet development without being given a mandate to do so.

Are you old enough to remember directories? These were wonderful places where you could bookmark a directory of thousands of sites all related to the things you were interested in. So, you could have a directory all about conspiracies, people would add links to their own conspiracy sites, and you could just go there and browse through thousands of them without a search engine dictating what you should see or what was relevant (according to whom?)

The first thing Google did when it had power was to "criminalize" directories, branding them "link farms" and devaluing them entirely. Directories died out because Google basically told them they were blacklisted. Google took over as the one true source, further solidifying the need for Google.

Everything Google does is eroding any competition and furthering the profits of the big bad corporation.

You just need to look at what Google has been doing over the last five years to know that almost everything it has done has been an attempt to blackmail small businesses and sites into spending on their ads - which is almost impossible to do when up against the bottomless pockets of corporations like Amazon.