Caught Red-Handed: Google Search Suppresses Climate Realism

– Caught Red-Handed: Google Search Suppresses Climate Realism:

Claims that Google Search improperly downranks some websites are frequent but not always correct, and they’re hard to prove even if they are. But the latest available (May 2017) Google Search Quality Evaluation General Guidelines provide conclusive proof of intentional, severe, and malicious suppression of climate realist views.  A quote:

“High quality information pages on scientific topics should represent well established scientific consensus on issues where such consensus exists.” (Section 3.2)

But the allegations of “scientific consensus” are made only in one field – climate alarmism!  “Scientific consensus” is almost an oxymoron.  Consensus is a decision-making method used outside of science.  This language is inserted in the guidelines with only one purpose – to eliminate climate realism websites from the results, shown to Google Search users.  This discrimination is exacerbated by classifying “news about important topics such as international events, business, politics, science, and technology?” as Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) Pages, for which Google claims to have especially high quality standards.  Classification of news as Your Money or Your Life Pages (which includes medical, legal, financial, and safety advice) is obviously intended to suppress political information that differs from the opinions of the leftstream media and Wikipedia, which Google considers the guardians of truth.  That is why WUWT and other climate realism websites are so well hidden by Google Search.

I anticipate some readers will defend this behavior as an exercise of freedom of speech.  But this is a clear case of fraud (or worse), not speech.  Google Search is a technical system for finding information on the Internet, just like a computer network with modem-routers and operated by an ISP is a technical system for accessing that information.  At least this is how Google positioned and advertised Google Search.  And this is what the majority of Google users believe they get when they use it.  Google repeatedly denied subjectivity and editorial discretion in assigning page ranking and producing search results.  This is in contrast with many specialized search engines, including my Non-Fake Media Web Search and Climate Realism Search.

Just like every other corporation, Google owes customers and prospective customers an accurate description of the services it offers.  Misrepresentation is a fraud.  It is time for state attorneys to investigate Google. It also seems that every Google user in the U.S. is entitled to sue for damages caused by this fraud.

Google’s actions have likely violated many other laws.  Deceitful and malicious promotion of websites, defaming or inciting hatred against scientists who testified in official proceedings against interests of climate alarmism governance is an example. This might qualify as witness tampering or retaliation.

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The Guidelines require a reviewer to evaluate Reputation, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and/or Trustworthiness (FEAT) of web pages. The recommended sources of the information confirm that a strong leftist bias of Google Search is by design. Incredibly, the Guidelines require the reviewers to use Wikipedia as the main source of information to evaluate FEAT of the web pages!  In its best days, anybody could write in Wikipedia whatever they wanted.  But now Wikipedia is controlled and ruled with an iron fist (in a velvet glove) by the leftist Wikimedia Foundation.  Other sources that Google recommends as reliable are The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, and Snopes.

The word consensus appears 18 times in both the current (May 2017) and the previous (March 2017) versions of the Guidelines.  It was not used in the March 2016 version at all.  Here are a few examples from the current version (red highlighting is mine):

“For news articles and information pages, high quality MC [MC – Main Content] must be factually accurate for the topic and must be supported by expert consensus where such consensus exists.” (Section 4.2)

“… high quality news articles and information pages on scientific topics should represent established scientific consensus where such consensus exists.” (Section 4.5)

“… for news articles and information pages on YMYL topics, there is a high standard for accuracy and well established medical/scientific/historical consensus where such consensus exists.” (Section 5.1)

“Some topics demand expertise for the content to be considered trustworthy. YMYL topics such as medical advice, legal advice, financial advice, etc. should come from authoritative sources in those fields, must be factually accurate, and must represent scientific/medical consensus within those fields where such consensus exists.” (Section 6.5)

“Before using the Fully Meets [user’s needs] rating for queries seeking a very specific fact or piece of information, you must check for accuracy and confirm that the information is supported by expert consensus where such consensus exists.” (Section 13.2)

“All of the following should be considered either lowest quality MC or no MC [MC – Main Content]:

• No helpful MC at all or so little MC that the page effectively has no MC.
• MC which consists almost entirely of “keyword stuffing.”
• Gibberish or meaningless MC.
• “Autogenerated” MC, or MC which was otherwise created with little to no time, effort, expertise, manual curation, or added value for users.
• Misleading or inaccurate informational content about YMYL topics.
• Pages or websites which appear to be deliberate attempts to misinform or deceive users by presenting factually inaccurate content.
• Pages or websites with factually inaccurate content which may harm or deceive users, regardless of their purpose or intent.
• MC which consists almost entirely of content copied from another source with little time, effort, expertise, manual curation, or added value for users.

Pages with lowest quality MC should be rated Lowest.” (Section 7.4)

Thus, pages containing what Google considers inaccurate content are rated as the lowest quality pages, “regardless their purpose or intent,” and regardless whether the allegedly inaccurate content does supposedly harm or just supposedly deceive the users!  Given Google’s opinion in the climate debate, most pages on this website have no content at all. I guess, the same logic applies to the pages that “deceive” the viewers to vote for Republicans.

There are also references to additional documents, not included in the Guidelines and not available to the public: “Website Reputation : Links to help with reputation research will be provided.”

Also, the Google policies reflected in the Guidelines create vicious informational spirals.  Google endorses leftstream media content. Then the reporters and editors of that media use Google and see results that confirm and amplify their biases, and so on.  The YMYL policies have the effect of decreasing political diversity and increasing political uniformity.  Even if the manual reviews according to these Guidelines do not directly impact the ranking of websites, the Guidelines reflect the principles and aims of Google Search.

Google consumes as much or more energy as the entire city San Francisco, and falsely claims that 100% of it is renewable energy.  Remember last year’s headlines like Google Says It Will Run Entirely on Renewable Energy in 2017 (NY Times) and Google to be powered 100% by renewable energy from 2017 (The Guardian)? Now Google claims it has achieved that goal.  Of course, this is a lie – Google gets electricity from the grid, and the energy it consumes is generated from the local mix of coal, natural gas, nuclear, and some hydro-power.  But it pays “renewable energy” ventures, in some of which Al Gore and his buddies are investors, and calls this operation “energy purchase.” It looks to me more like a fraud, possibly even a bribe.  Well, Google management might think it buys virtual energy.

Google directly sponsors Inside Climate News, which is a part of the Rockefeller Brothers/Family Fund’s attempt to shut down U.S. energy industries!.  Google’s Eric Schmidt also supports climate alarmism with pre-tax money through his “charitable” foundation.

Google (Alphabet) pays income tax at the effective rate 19%, instead of 41% combined federal and California tax rate it is supposed to pay.

By the way, even the famous Google’s motto “Don’t be evil” is evil.  It suggests that most other businesses are evil, which is false.

Disclosure: I hold short positions in GOOG.

H/t reader kevin a.

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