The new "rule of six" -- and the absence of an SI
Discussion
citizensm1th said:
Now search using Bing or DuckDuckGo.https://www.bing.com/search?q=the+great+barrington...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+great+barrington+dec...
Edited by gareth_r on Sunday 11th October 03:53
citizensm1th said:
That’s using the ‘news’ tab.Use the ‘all’ tab as the vast majority of users do and the actual site is nowhere to be seen.
Use Bing (other search engines are available) and the top result is https://gbdeclaration.org/
Some may think this odd.
https://www.google.com/search?q=great+barrington+d...
Ohhh lookie still there if you search all on Google.
Why oh why do tinfoil hatters always post rubbish that is so easy to disprove?
Ohhh lookie still there if you search all on Google.
Why oh why do tinfoil hatters always post rubbish that is so easy to disprove?
citizensm1th said:
https://www.google.com/search?q=great+barrington+d...
Ohhh lookie still there if you search all on Google.
Why oh why do tinfoil hatters always post rubbish that is so easy to disprove?
It's obvious that the top results on Google are those that attempt to discredit "The Great Barrington Declaration".Ohhh lookie still there if you search all on Google.
Why oh why do tinfoil hatters always post rubbish that is so easy to disprove?
The top results on Bing and DuckDuckGo are completely different.
https://www.bing.com/search?q=the+great+barrington...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+great+barrington+dec...
Nothing to do with "tinfoil hatters".
EDIT: I wonder if "OK yesterday, but why is 'Great Barrington Declaration' now not being found in [UK] Google search ?" will remain as one of the top Google results.
https://support.google.com/websearch/thread/761579...
Edited by gareth_r on Sunday 11th October 13:58
citizensm1th said:
https://www.google.com/search?q=great+barrington+d...
Ohhh lookie still there if you search all on Google.
Why oh why do tinfoil hatters always post rubbish that is so easy to disprove?
Thanks for all the insults, very much appreciated. See below for the results of the search last night when I posted, I did not bother posting the image as it seemed unnecessary: Ohhh lookie still there if you search all on Google.
Why oh why do tinfoil hatters always post rubbish that is so easy to disprove?
You will note the absence of the Great Barrington website. Clearly something changed overnight. I am glad I saved the image.
Now, Google's search algorithm is opaque at the best of times. However, provided your website isn't utterly atrocious (e.g. usability, mobile friendly, above-the-fold) in general the website for "ACME Widgets Ltd" will come near the top of the results for "ACME Widgets Ltd". For example, random company that I know of which has a somewhat generic name:
The home site for something holds a lot of weight in respect of being about that something and thus you would not anticipate sites describing it or linking to it to appear higher in the results.
The Koch brothers backing actually makes it more odd since this is presumably not a site knocked up by someone's 15 year old daughter in her spare time. There are three reasons I can think for why the site did not appear in the results:
1) Lousy site and poor SEO. Seems unlikely with high powered backers
2) Government "D-Notice" (I know that's not the correct term anymore but most people still call them that). Possible but also seems unlikely. Especially for it to be raised and processed so quickly on a weekend.
3) A co-ordinated effort by various organisations and people to flood google's results with links that outranked the gbdeclaration website. That would require a fair amount of technical skill and a lot of effort.
Of course there is also
4) Something else entirely; cock up in some fashion somewhere. I would say as simple as google hadn't spidered the page yet, but it was appearing when using a VPN to search from the USA so that theory is shaky.
Now, (2) and (3) are troubling as it implies that freedom of speech is threatened. Whatever you may think of the contents of the declaration itself, if you have your sensible head on you can't agree with it being so "easy" for it to be pushed out the search results to prevent people making their own judgement. As I have said before, it's all fun and games when the manipulation is going the way you want it - "good old Boris, giving the EU what for and telling them to stuff their treaty" but it's less fun when it is going against you.
This is what concerns me - we have a parliament that no longer debates new laws and anyone querying the new orthodoxy appears to be being silenced by various means. I really thought we'd moved beyond a dogmatic society where a sacred council issues a list of "banned books" and forbids discussion.
I freely avow this website search issue may not be a conspiracy, but since there was no discussion and instead everyone above has instantly resorted to name-calling, it's slightly harder to consider that we have not descended into partisanship.
Should I now go off and utter 100 "Hail Borises" and make a donation to the Conservative Party Roof Replacement fund as penance?
That may well be the item number 4.
PageRank (Google's Algorithm) doesn't usually work like that. I deliberately left out all the boring technical bits, not least because they are always tweaking it and nobody outside Google knows exactly what to do to come top (the days of stuffing keywords in your webpage header are long gone), but as I mentioned normally the organisation's home page has a high placing, which made me curious. I chose my "Global Payments" example firm deliberately as it's a vague term that could be interpreted in many ways but the company of that name still comes top and obviously they have plenty of press releases about them which come lower in the search results, which is where you would expect the stories about the declaration to appear.
However, it may well be that the sheer quantity of stories - probably cross-linked to each other and from more authoritative sources than a random website that only popped up a week ago - all written in a single day about the GB Declaration have triggered the algorithm into some sort of edge case that has resulted in an unusual ranking.
PageRank (Google's Algorithm) doesn't usually work like that. I deliberately left out all the boring technical bits, not least because they are always tweaking it and nobody outside Google knows exactly what to do to come top (the days of stuffing keywords in your webpage header are long gone), but as I mentioned normally the organisation's home page has a high placing, which made me curious. I chose my "Global Payments" example firm deliberately as it's a vague term that could be interpreted in many ways but the company of that name still comes top and obviously they have plenty of press releases about them which come lower in the search results, which is where you would expect the stories about the declaration to appear.
However, it may well be that the sheer quantity of stories - probably cross-linked to each other and from more authoritative sources than a random website that only popped up a week ago - all written in a single day about the GB Declaration have triggered the algorithm into some sort of edge case that has resulted in an unusual ranking.
"ETA: I see the government has pressured google to hide the Great Barrington Declaration from search results. That is deeply troubling."
now when someone posts the above , it is only reasonable to think the poster is at the very least susceptible to conspiracy theories and all the baggage that comes with such buffoonery.
you have not posted any evidence that the government has pressured google to do anything.
so google algorithms or government pressure? ,your later posts seem to be wittering on about google black magic around how sites are ranked.
do you want to pick a story and keep to it? or are you just going to continue to ramble while providing no proof of your original assertion to government pressure?
now when someone posts the above , it is only reasonable to think the poster is at the very least susceptible to conspiracy theories and all the baggage that comes with such buffoonery.
you have not posted any evidence that the government has pressured google to do anything.
so google algorithms or government pressure? ,your later posts seem to be wittering on about google black magic around how sites are ranked.
do you want to pick a story and keep to it? or are you just going to continue to ramble while providing no proof of your original assertion to government pressure?
There are many grounds for criticising the Government, but we should resist lurching into implausible conspiracy theories. It's bad enough that I find myself agreeing with some of what flakeheads such as Peter Hitchens say without going full green ink. I console myself that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Here is some more realistic criticism of the appalling shower of s
theads that preside over the current omnishambles -
https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2020/10/05/20100...
theads that preside over the current omnishambles -https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2020/10/05/20100...
I am not a fan of old Fox Botherer, but he may be on to something ...
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/131555365867163...
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/131555365867163...
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