Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Google Targeting Santorum?

I personally don't believe they are, but it is obvious that Romney has a special place in their heart, as when you go to Goggle news, his name has been in the top ten list (upper left) for six monthes.
_____________________



Is Google Targeting Rick Santorum?
Sunday, 26 Feb 2012 06:27 PM

By David A. Patten

Type the word "Santorum" in Google and you won't find his campaign website or other positive, useful information about him in the first, second or even third entries.

In fact, almost every entry on the all-important first page of "Santorum" results � the one most users see � is laden with nasty, sometimes vulgar attacks.

The very first entry for his name offers a "definition" that reads "Santorum 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick Santorum."

The definition is repeated in another entry in the popular website Urban Dictionary, which is a compendium of street and often-vulger slang terms.

Other first page Google entries include those with headings such as "Santorum Exposed," "Despicable: Rick Santorum's Wife Uses Her Sick Child To Lie About ...," and "Rick Santorum's Anal Sex Problem."

Buried amid the smut is entry number 7, which offers a link to Santorum's official campaign website.

Is Google at war with Rick Santorum?

Santorum himself says that Google is treating him with a double standard and addressed the high-tech aspersions cast against him, via what the media has euphemistically called �Santorum�s Google problem.� He spoke with Google chief Eric Schmidt prior to the debate that was sponsored by Google.

�All I know,� Santorum told ABC News in October, �is that with respect to Michelle Obama there was a situation with her that they quote fixed, there was a situation with President Obama they quote fixed, there was a situation with President Bush they fixed.

�And they�ve decided this doesn�t rise to the level that they need to address. There are those frankly on the left and the right that have written about this and suggested that there is a little bit of, well, duplicity on their part as to their excuse.�

Google's anti-Santorum bias, real or imagined, may be costing him votes.

For example, the smoke barely cleared from the Feb. 23 GOP debate when Google served up what journalists interpreted as bad news for Santorum: The top searches related to the debate appeared to stem only from the negative attacks against the former senator from Pennsylvania.

Searches for �earmarks� jumped 2,300 percent. �Bridge to nowhere� rose by about 600 percent.

Of course, those searches could have turned up information that supported Santorum�s contention that he is the genuine conservative best suited to challenge the establishment favorite and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Newsmax perused the news results from a Google search of Santorum�s name for several days following the debate, and found he was much more likely to be linked to negative news stories than either Obama or Romney.

For example a query of "Obama" on Google returns a first page that gives almost all positive or neutral entries except for one.

Similarly, a Google search for "Romney" finds only one negative entry with the headline "Romney" and explanatory text saying "You +1'd this publicly. Romney 1. To defecate in terror. 2. Former Governor Mitt Romney."

Adding to the concern that Google may be leaning in favor of Mitt Romney in the GOP primary is the fact that on Friday Google hired former Rep. Susan Molinari, R-NY, a staunch Romney supporter, to head its lobbying team. As The Hill put it, "Google is hedging its bets on the outcome of the 2012 presidential election."

Molinari fiercely attacked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich when he seemed likely to derail Romney's presidential bid.

"Obviously, if Romney does win the White House, then Google would feel like it's in a very good place," Viveca Novak, a spokeswoman for the Center for Responsive Politics, told The Hill.

But what if Santorum turns out to be the GOP nominee? Then Google may have a whole new problem on its hands. Santorum is unique among the candidates in the way in which his surge has been hindered by the world's premiere search engine.

Google likes to present itself as an impartial information utility that simply presents the information that is making the biggest splash on the Web at any given time.

"We rank search results to deliver the best answers to users, and that is the only consideration � not political viewpoints and not advertising dollars,� a Google spokesman told Newsmax.

But conservatives� suspicions that they get a less than fair shake from the powerful search giant remain strong, perhaps because Google employees and executives were collectively Obama�s fourth-largest donor to the Obama campaign in the 2008 cycle, contributing some $814,540 according to FEC records.

Google relies on an elaborate series of algorithms, or mathematical rules, to determine how much play to give any given story. As Internet usage has grown, expanding into portable devices such as cell phones, mastering the ability to optimize search results has become an important industry. That is as true for politics as any other field of endeavor.

Dan Gainor, vice president of media and culture for the Media Research Center, told Newsmax that marginal groups that have a radical viewpoint have had success using the Internet to target conservatives.

�While Google results are suspect because of the �black box� nature of how they arrive at them,� he said, �much of this reflects a concerted effort by fringe lefties to harm Santorum.

�The targeted attack on Santorum, courtesy of anti-bullying hypocrite Dan Savage, is one of the most vile in Internet history. Lots of lefty organizations helped drive traffic to it. Of late, liberals have done the same, but on a lesser scale to Mitt Romney,� he said.

In responding to Santorum's public complaints, Google officials say they are constantly looking for ways to tweak their algorithms to help them more precisely reflect what is taking place on the Internet. They promise that effort will continue.

�We have a case of cyber-bullying that�s going on by a group of folks, and Google has decided it doesn�t rise to the level that they�re going to pay any attention to it,� Santorum told ABC News.




Read more on Newsmax.com: Is Google Targeting Rick Santorum?
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

The establishment knows a social conservative who goes so far as to say that JFK's words about the separation of Church and State make him want to vomit can't win the independent vote. What's worse is Santorum's politically suicidal statements about changing benefits for people already on Social Security. Every retired person knows change means cuts.

Agree with him or not, the establishment sees him loosing big to Obama, so it's only to be expected that they'll do all they can to defeat Santorum in order to give Romney a change to defeat Obama.

If gas goes to $5 or more soon enough to weaken the economy then Romney has a good chance of defeating Obama. New bumper sticker "Drive To Beat Obama". If you really don't like Obama use an extra 5 or 10 gallons of gas a week and fill up those empty gas cans.

That smear on Santorum has been around since his failed PA Senate re-election campaign. A gay columnist who loathes Rick Santorum, named Dan Savage, got his followers to "google bomb" Santorum's name with disgusting links over a period of years. It's similar to what was done during the Bush administration, so that when you typed in "George Bush" it returned the wikipedia search for "idiot" or some such ridiculous result as the top google search. That's why Google shows those as results: because thousands/millions of clicks were made to rig those results in google's automated search. Sometimes google will lock out such false results, but generally they choose not to.
In this case, it probably doesn't help that they're a company with HQ less than an hour outside of San Francisco. There's likely not many Rick Santorum voters working at Google.

If you don't think Google has it out for Santorum, just search for "Santorum" on any of the other search engines and compare the results.

Google is run by the Gay Mafia.

I may be wrong, but I belive one can buy prominence in Google's search engine to assure that ones product floats to the top of the heap. I.e. Money talks.

Its the elite establishment for sure. Do a search for 1%ers and ya get everything about outlaw bikers.

Oldie but goodie..

Google has nothing to do with the "establishment", they are a left wing corporation that will do anything in it's power to help Obama, whether the candidate has the potential to win or not.

10-4 that.

My results were different, as they showed Rick Santorum own site.



Makes me wonder if Google tailors search results to the user. I am behind the complex firewall of a large company, and tailoring results to my IP does not make a lot of sense.

Hmm... those are quite different from the results I got this morning...

I got the same thing. I'm not behind a big firewall

Google endorsed Romney. So, I guess that is to be expected.

I didn't find this on a Google search right off the top though.

http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-v...-picks-romney-backer-as-new-top-lobbyist

All you tin foil conspirators might try typing first just Santorum into Google. Then type in just Romney.

Compare.

:roll:

John Stewart mentioned in passing that homosexual organizations were responsible for the definition topping the charts of Google searches by first posting it (creating the fictional word and definition as a site on Google), and then flooding Google with searches for that definition on a daily basis, which brings it to the top and keeps it there.

Google did NOT endorse Romney. They hired a lobbyist that has connections to Romney. Corporations always hedge their bets, but Google is firmly in bed with Obama, which the article you linked, states if you read beyond the first sentence.

This one is a double edged sword, it matters not whether any given site has as an agenda, what matters is that the information that comes up is accurate or not. The trap that one "side" easily falls into is determining a news source has it in for "their" guy, and then they discount and rule out everything said as being bogus. That is the difference between being able to differentiate between fact and fiction with an open mind.

Just because someone or an organization has it in for someone doesn't mean that the information portrayed is false or true either. It takes an open minded and inquiring intellect to differentiate between the two.

So what if google has it in? It matters not as long as information sources are given open opportunity to tell it their way. You can get as many positive stories on Santorum written from the supportive side as you see the negative. Generally speaking the negative outweighs any positive because voting for someone who has any critical known negatives is idiotic. To vote for a negative to remove what is deemed to be a worse negative is voting for all the wrong reasons. Positives need to be looked at and carefully weighed before things can possibly head in a positive direction.

The voice of reason

Being I was talking about the establishment helping Romney you should have concluded that I was talking about the Republican establishment. Also, if Google was really about helping Obama they would be helping Santorum defeat Romney, not the other way around.

The Republican establishment has no control on Google. Google has been in the back pocket of the Democrats for years...,or perhaps the other way around.

I don't know that you (or I) can make that assumption, we don't really know who Obama prefers. And for all we know, Google may just hate Social Conservatives so much that they are doing this from leftist principal.