Is there a conspiracy deep in the belly of the Internet beast? Are corporate entities secretly driving the information available to you-subtly stroking toward a global political opinion matching their own agenda? Maybe they are. Maybe they're not.
WebProWorld For the unwitting, it is largely assumed that this info-universe is under the tight, objective thumb of algorithms, a mathematical surety of neutrality. But in the world outside, humans prove craftier than processors, and find ways to outsmart search engines. Add some advertising, and the pure waters of objectivity become a cloudy, bleach-white mess. The icy truth is that neither humans nor search engines are perfect, and eschewed SERPs seem a hard to control inevitability. Google wields the type of power that transforms vocabularies. It has become its own part of speech. Need information on Montana militias? Google it. Though militias be found, sponsored links to firearms dealers that can help you join, are not. For Google, Yahoo, and other search engines, gun retailers are persona non grata. That leads to a lot of questions. If search engines are selective about their advertising, are they selective about other things? Are search results slanted? Is Google liberal or conservative? Why are porn ads okay and gun ads not? Recently, the subject has been broached on many sites, conservative and liberal, insisting that Google is slanted in favor of the other side. But how can it be both? It may just be a matter of perception. By some accounts, paying an SEO to increase keyword relevance is essentially the same as paid inclusion. The routes are different, but the end is the same-paying to be listed #1. Is that perspective or truth? Is it just semantic gaming? Google recently found Rightmarch.com protested Google's censoring an ad that was a verbatim copy, aside from changing the name of Tom Delay to Nancy Pelosi, of a DNC advertisement. But it seems far-fetched that Google is both liberal and conservative at once. Gun advocates, though, insist search engines are, indeed, slanted.Comments (0)
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