January 21, 2010

Google No Like!

The main Google searchbox on Google.com has a feature where if you start typing a phrase it tries to anticipate what you have in mind and offer the complete phrase in a drop down pick list based on what other users have asked. For example if you type into Google's searchbox
How do I

Google offers ten suggestions for completing this entry, beginning with these three useful questions:
How do I find my IP address
How do I know if im pregnant
How do I get a passport

Commenter Victoria points out that if you type in, however, Pat Bu, Google offers you the following ten prompts:
Pat Burrell
Pat bus schedule
Pat Buttram
Pat Burrell stats
Pat Burns
Pat Burrell wife
Pat Burke
Pat Buckley Moss
Pat Buckley
Pat Burns cancer

Who are these people?

Using the power of Google, it's easy to discover that Pat Burrell is a leftfielder, Pat Buttram was Gene Autry's sidekick in 1930s singing cowboy movies and later Mr. Haney on Green Acres. Pat Burns is a former hockey coach. Pat Buckley Moss is a painter. Pat Buckley was the wife of William F. Buckley.

Somehow, I don't think those are the most famous Pat Bu...s on the Internet today.

If you type in Pat Buc, then Google just gives up giving you prompts, which it doesn't with other letters. For example, Pat But prompts you with a whole bunch of new names even more obscure than the immortal Pat Buttram.

Maybe it's just a misunderstanding. So, let's type into Google Patrick Bu. And we get another list of prompts, but none of them include He Who Must Not Be Named.

Finally if you type in Patrick J. you'll get a list of prompts of people named Patrick J. Something, none of them as famous as Patrick J. Buchanan, winner of the 1996 New Hampshire GOP Presidential primary.

Of course, Google can't (yet?) delete Pat Buchanan from their main search engine, just from the prompts. If you type Pat Buchanan into Google's searchbox, you get back:
Results 1 - 20 of about 1,630,000 for pat buchanan. (0.22 seconds)

In contrast, if you type in Pat Buttram:
Results 1 - 20 of about 49,300 for pat buttram. (0.32 seconds)

It's the sheer pettiness of Google going to the trouble of banning Pat Buchanan from its little prompting feature, one of its least important, that is so amusing and eye-opening.

P.S.: Richard Hoste points out in comments that Yahoo.com's search bar has the same prompting engine, with Pat Buchanan being the first of the Pat Bu and second, behind Pat Benatar, for Pat B. Another commenter points out the Microsoft's Bing search bar delivers the same prompts as Yahoo: Buchanan is the #1 Pat Bu and #2 Pat B.

So, somebody at Google is doing this intentionally. To repeat, this one example isn't at all important -- what's striking is the mindless animus of somebody at Google that would lead to going to all the trouble of doing such a trivial thing.

And because Google is so close to being a monopoly, it's crucial that the public monitor abuses by Google stemming from Google's not exactly subtle political biases, such as this silly little thing or the more serious annihilation of Mangan's blog in November (which was rectified after many complaints).

Ridicule is the best medicine.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

114 comments:

Vernunft said...

ChiComs - awesome!

Pat Buchanan - boohiss!

Stay classy, Google.

Anonymous said...

I think you will find you are wrong, Google is very careful about not manually altering the results of it's algorithms.

For example, search for 'Jew' and note the "Offensive Search Results" advert, paid for, by google.

There was so much complaint about antisemitic results that google had to do something, but they still refused to alter the results, so they include an advert explaining why anti-semetic results appear so highly.

What do you think the algorithm is for the suggestive completion ? it may not be what you think, it might only include recent searches for example, or recent searches from your area.

OneSTDV said...

A similar thing was noted by PZ Myers ("PC Meyer") concerning Google searches for Islam:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/google_is_being_sensitive.php

Anonymous said...

See also, the Google ClimateGate files.

This is not the first time.

Dahlia said...

Pat Buchanan is worse than porn!

I just tried typing in "ron j" and I of course got the porn star (Never heard of him pre-internet; mundane political comment threads can be quite an education) in my prompts. When I added an e to make "ron je", I got "Ron Jeremy's weiner" among my prompts.

I'm a woman so I had no idea Google was so "helpful" this way.

TCO said...

Something similar happened with "climatega...". There was the argument that perhaps the recent explosion of the term climategate was creating an anti-spam rejection mathematically...or perhaps even that denialists were attempting to googlebomb. However, in this case there is no recent runup for Pat. Doesn't look good...

The

Anonymous said...

It works on Bing.com, he's right there behind Pat Benetar.

Anonymous said...

Another good one is "Islam is"
especially when you compare it to "Christianity is"

Anonymous said...

I had to type in "steve sai" before I finally got "Steve Sailer Vdare" in the drop down menu.

Steve Sailer said...

I get "Steve Sailer" as the second choice (after U. of Washington football coach Steve Sarkisian) when I type in

steve sa

So, I can't complain.

But it just makes the Pat Bu think look more intentional.

Luxancta said...

I've sent a query to the Google Web Search Help Forum citing this page. Hope this doesn't get you blacklisted.

Eric said...

Google is famous for this sort of thing. It happens far to often to be accidental. In recent years there seems to be a bit of a backlash building, but Google doesn't seem to be losing much market share.

bjdouble said...

Adolf H doesn't get you anything either. Why bother? Google would be much better off just saying "we don't mess with the results." Once they do they open themselves up to attack.

Richard Hoste said...

Absolutely creepy!

But Google gives you Richard Hoste, Don Black, Kevin MacDonald, Steve Sailer and David Duke. What's up with that? Hoste they just don't care about, but why are the rest still there?

Anonymous said...

"I think you will find you are wrong, Google is very careful about not manually altering the results of it's algorithms."

No, it is you who are certainly mistaken. There are any number of violations of p.c. that not only are censored from suggestions by google, they don't even appear in the search results. Many times you can search verbatim sentences from recent postings on well-trafficked webpages and they simply do not appear on google, but will on a competitor. In my experience it has been references to some malfeasance on the part of blacks.

Richard Hoste said...

By the way, Buchanan is number one if you put in "Pat Bu" and two behind Pat Benatar with "Pat B" on Yahoo!

Steve Sailer said...

So, Buchanan = Hitler to Google?

Larry, San Francisco said...

What is interesting I tried Adolf in Google and got Adolf Eichman but not Hitler.

That's pretty weird.

jody said...

google does this for every conceivable pornographic text search. it's hard to believe they actually have people working on censoring every bizarre way somebody could type sexually explicit phrases into google, but it seems that they must.

try typing explicit sexual sentences into google, and see how it almost immediately stops trying to anticipate what you'll type next.

alexa and quantcast also do the same thing for sex sites. sex sites are still in their databases, and they roughly know how many hits every sex site gets, but they removed the sex sites from their internet traffic reports sometime ago. in 2007 or 2008 for quantcast, if i remember right.

Steve Sailer said...

So, in Google's eyes:

Adolf Eichmann is better than Pat Buchanan

Richard Hoste said...

So, Buchanan = Hitler to Google?

I was going to say "But they let you search for Hitler." Until I checked and it turns out you can't! Really Google? Like we'll forget who he is if there's no prompt!

Anonymous said...

Meanwhile Netanyahu declares in Israel:

"We founded a Jewish and democratic state, and we can't let it turn into a foreign workers' state."

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000532654&fid=942

Otis the Sweaty said...

Amazingly, even "Otis the Sweaty" has it's own google prompt. Probably because I have googled it so many times.

Anonymous said...

it may not be what you think, it might only include recent searches for example, or recent searches from your area.

Ive just tried the same set of searches in google as Steve lists. Im in the the UK, so its google uk and guess what? Exactly the same result

Anonymous said...

Pat Buchanan T-shirts would be a good idea.

"Right from the Beginning".


Much cooler than Che. George Washington, Madison, Jefferson. Could be a marketable idea there.

Anonymous said...

This must be very confusing for Whiskey.What with his thing about a certain Pat Buchanon.

James B. Shearer said...

"hit" completes to hitler on google. Not clear to me what is going on.

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Same results in Taiwan, too. It's clearly not based on where you are.

Anonymous said...

And the lesser well known Peter Brimelow and Steve Sailer are both smeared as racists in the second entry, though your views are probably very close to Buchanan on many issues and Buchanan is on lefty MSNBC about 2 hours a day!

rob said...

And yet typing "why are black" results in the helpful completions:

why are black people so loud
why are black people so ugly...
It doesn't get much less pc. than that

Le Mur said...

I entered "How " and the first suggestion was "How to make a voodoo doll"! (My previous search had been "voodoo"; which reminds me, reference.dictionary.com never heard of "vodou").

McVickers said...

Steve says: ...this one example isn't at all important -- what's striking is the mindless animus of somebody at Google that would lead to going to all the trouble of doing such a trivial thing.

1. This action is not "mindless" animus. It's radical ideology at work.

2. This action is not a "trivial" thing. It's a calculated attack in the Culture War.

And what about the obvious question: "Who will be next to start circling the Google memory hole?"

couchscientist said...

For those defending google here, you are wrong. Look at their own search results on google insight trends:

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=%22Pat%20Buchanan%22%2C%22Pat%20Burrell%22%2C%22Pat%20bus%20schedule%22%2C%22Pat%20Buttram%22%2C%22Pat%20Burrell%20stats%22&cmpt=q

You can see that Pat Burrell is the only close in searches. Same works in news. They have done this on purpose.

Xenophon Hendrix said...

I found this at the Google site:

"We try to filter out suggestions that include pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms. If you encounter a term that should not be suggested, please let us know by posting in the Google Web Search Help Forum."

See here at the bottom of the page.

I wonder if "Pat Buchanan" was overzealously put in the "hate" terms.

Chris said...

"Buchanan" alone doesn't even occur as a suggestion. Nor does "James Buchanan." Maybe they've got a problem with that surname entirely.

AL said...

Their censorship is spotty, at best. For instance, entering "michell" results in an autocomplete of "michelle obama monkey" as the fifth result. One would assume that Google could do a more thorough job, if they chose to, of scrubbing searches they don't like. This seems more like one or more individual rogues removing their own short lists of targets. Just a guess.

Udolpho.com said...

There have been many tales over the years of GOOG deliberately blacklisting people or sites from its results purely to punish things GOOG doesn't like (and yes some of these are verified). But when a company suggests its motto is "don't be evil", I know enough to expect them to start doing unethical things immediately.

Kind of like how I knew that Randy Cohen's Ethicist answer column in the NYT would immediately start dispensing shrill political dicta that had no ethical or moral basis.

stari_momak said...

I hate predictive spelling in general, but in Google's case you would think it queers the whole project , surely a significant number of folks are

1. accidentally hitting the prediction, thus searching something they don't want to search, giving that something more hits and thus (most likely) influencing Googles ranking algorithm

2. getting distracted and searching for the suggestion rather than the originally desired search

Predictive spelling is a tool of the status quo.

Fred said...

Google search removed all listings to my PrestoPundit after I broke the story about Obama's socialist father, the man Obama says gave him his political ideals.

All pleas to relist my blog were ignored.

rich s. said...

Tim Wu, a prof of Internet law at Columbia, said, websites “ha(ve) more power over speech than many governments. We have to make sure that they're being reasonable.”
But he was an Edwards for President supporter so I doubt he’d be too upset over this.

Today’s SCOTUS 'Citizens United' decision looms more important.

AmericanGoy said...

Well, "americango" does not bring anything either.

I am small potatoes though.

Xenophon Hendrix said...

You might find this discussion thread about "Islam is" at the Google Support Forum to be of interest. It doesn't contain any official response, but it does have some speculation by person who at least sound as if they have a clue.

Anonymous said...

Sayeth Google:

We try to filter out suggestions that include pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms.

Well, heck. Type in "Cleveland s" and the third result, behind Cleveland Show and Cleveland State University, is "Cleveland steamer." You can't get much more pornographic than that :)

Peter

Anonymous said...

Their censorship is spotty, at best. For instance, entering "michell" results in an autocomplete of "michelle obama monkey" as the fifth result. One would assume that Google could do a more thorough job, if they chose to, of scrubbing searches they don't like. This seems more like one or more individual rogues removing their own short lists of targets. Just a guess.

No, still not quite getting the who, whom.

El Cynico said...

Boo frickin' hoo. Wawawaaaaa. Sniff.

Turns out Uncle Google is not "Mr Nice Guy" after all.

Somebody get me a hanky.

Yeah, Google management felt everything was kosher with ultra-repressive, totalitarian, Orwellian China until the Chinese went just a little bit too far with their recent hacker hijinks.

Okey-dokey. Now...

Do not read without a hanky: Google Maps imagery, currently available in the public area, displays at about about 1/100 of the satellite magnification imagery that is available in the restricted area of Google (not open to the public).

Do not read without a hanky: Google Chrome browser has taken user tracking to a whole new level.

Do not read without a hanky: Google has provided search engine query user files going back years to a wide variety of intel and security departments as a matter of routine - in cases with no warrant, arrest or even "person of interest" declaration.

Boo frickin' hoo! Say it isn't so, Joe Goog. Please tell us you aren't a gigantic intelligence operation, Uncle Google!

Waaawaaawaaa. I can't type anymore...can't see through all of the tears.

Kylie said...

It's not just Google's drop-down menu that implies a leftwing bias.

Its logo also indicates that Google no like some patriotic America holidays. A few years ago, conservative groups complained that Google had not acknowledged either Memorial Day or Veterans Day with a "doodle" but had marked the launch of Sputnik by America's Cold War adversary.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-google9oct09,0,2321354.story?coll=la-home-center

Anonymous said...

Steve:

If I type "storm" into Google, the suggestions come up as follows:

storm 2
storm the house 3
storm chasers
storm the house 3 cheats
storm the house 2
stormtrooper costume
storm king
storm windows
stormy kromer

If I add another 'f', I get the expected result and a direct link to said website.

My guess (as a software engineer in the search business) is that they're suggesting based on the exponentially weighted moving average volume of queries (where the 'movement' is over time) rather than the number of corresponding results in their index.

Typing in "sco" and seeing the first suggestion as "scott brown daughters" seems to confirm my suspicion.

Hawaii 5-O said...

Be careful. Steve has deleted my posts that refer to the "secret Obama father theory" that you are so circuitously describing.

Oh hey by the way here's a random unrelated fact I'd like to pass on to readers now for no reason at all: Wiki took down the photo at their Frank Marshall Davis page.

AllanF said...

Google is notorious among libertarian tech-types for their politburo-esque censorship. And yes, the most troubling aspect is how petty they seem about it. One can't help but wonder what they are doing with the really important stuff.

Robert said...

Is it possible that Pat Buchanan requested that his name not come up?

Richard Hoste said...

No Bay Buchanan either! They've cursed his entire family! Google at least left Hitler's parents in.

By the way, I tried "why are" with different races and noted the results.

Garland said...

Google's Islam searches

http://www.foxsmallbusinesscenter.com/scitech/2010/01/08/google-censoring-islam/

Chief Seattle said...

Adolf Hitler stops suggesting at H. Top match for "Adolf" is "Adolf Eichmann". But if you look at Google Trends, Adolf Hitler has about 10x the searches of Adolf Eichmann, as you'd expect.

But "Hitler" matches after "hit" and keeps matching through "Hitler Adolf". So if it is a manual black listing, it's a strange one. Still, there's a lot of Internet consolidation going on, and a huge push by the MSM to highlight Facebook and Twitter - which IMO is because the want the bulk of the population using something that's easy to control, similar to the way there are only 4 networks and 6 or 7 Hollywood studios.

md said...

Here's how it works: Since Google is the biggest fish by far and owns many local domains (google.fr, google.tr etc.) as opposed to bing.com, it has to comply with a lot of local legal ideosycrasies as to which search results to filter in a certain country.

See here ( http://www.chillingeffects.org/keyword.cgi?KeywordID=60 ) for a SMALL list of complaints and court orders against Google. There are hundreds of these DAILY)

In practice this means that from, say, google.tr many results that deal with the genocide in Armenia or otherwise "offends turkishness" are zapped. You get a notice instead which basically says: "XY search results have been removed from the results. Look at chillingeffects.org as to why".

Same with Germany for holocaust denial, Australia for "squirt porn", china with lots of stuff (which you never notice unless you search in Chinese), canada with neonazi groups. Some countries obviously make Google remove some Islam stuff from its local subdomains, most notably India. Lots of privacy and music stuff, too.

For search results, these local effects can mostly be circumvented by visiting google.com instead of google.tr. Not so for the dropdown lists: These are central. They are also fully automatical. They penalize keywords which occur frequently on sites that are banned on any local engine and sum them against the frequency of "legit" results. Dropdown results are localized, but zapping is applied across the board. For search results, both are localized.

So things like "aryan nation" are zapped worldwide because of a Canadian ban, and because they appear so frequently on zapped sites, but hardly ever elsewhere.

This also explains why "Hitl" gives you the expected result (appears very frequently on legit sites) but "Adolf Hi" doesn't: Appears with a much lower frequency on legit sides (reasons unknown) as opposed to higher frequency on zapped sites (people there pay more respect to his person and thus frequently include his first name, I'd say).

There's more: Try slowly: "pat buchann", probably a frequent misspelling. You draw blanks for "pat bu" till "pat buchan". Add the wrong additional n, and here he is. Why? Because adherents probably know how to spell his name. So the wrong version will not appear on zapped sites with great frequency.

Try "nud". Can you think of a word? Hell, yes. But Google draws a blank, because whole semantic fields are poisoned by their high occurrence in zapped sites. Also, "safe search" defaults to yes in dropdowns.

"climategate"? Too fast; it's #1 on "clim" now. Thsi stuff needs about 2 weeks.

"islam is"? Say thanks to India.

Plus, you must play this game without a google cookie in your cache.

Plus, most importantly, dropdown lists are generated from the frequency of queries, not the frequency of results -- and people are daft. Try "are " (with a space) for proof.

Mike said...

I think the important question here is, is the majority of this censorship manual or automatic? Are most of these phrases blacklisted individually from complaints, or is there some set of algorithms that try to censor suggestions which statistical indicators deem incendiary or pornographic?

My money would be on (mostly) automatic. Still, it doesn't absolve google from any responsibility. There's no reasonable definition under which Pat Buchanan should be a censored phrase.

Dahlia said...

Speaking of Pat...

His article, "Has Obama lost white America?" is on Drudge as of right now. It's really good and even echoes some of Thomas B. Edsall's article, "Ghost Story" at the New Republic website.

"...In New Jersey, same story. McCain won 8 percent of the black vote. Gov. Chris Christie won 8 percent of the black vote. How did Christie turn a McCain loss of New Jersey by 16 points into a 5-point victory?

The white vote. McCain won the white vote in New Jersey 50 to 49, but Christie won the white vote 59 to 34, almost 2 to 1."

James Kabala said...

md: It's good to see someone who knows what he's talking about, since I certainly don't.

There are still several unanswered questions. Pat Buchanan is, after all, more mainstream than any other paleoconservative figure, appearing regularly on MSNBC and PBS after years as one of the most prominent personalities on CNN. Can his name really appear more commonly on neo-Nazi websites than that of David Duke? (Not only does Duke himself come up as a prompt, but they helpfully supply a prompt for DavidDuke.com!)

Furthermore, why do other Buchanans such as his sister Bay or James Buchanan (both the president and the economist) also fall under the ban? (I checked this out myself and it is true.) That makes no sense at all to me, and contradicts the fact that "Hitler" is OK even though "Adolf Hitler" is not.

Robert said...

It is because David Duke is a better movie critic than Pat Buchanan.

Anonymous said...

Try typing in ISLAM IS and NOTHING will come up, unlike with other religions.

Anonymous said...

Dare to compare - google may be blocking Patrick J. Buchanan, but try typing Samuel T. Francis...

...they don't seem to have a problem with that name...

...so what does that say?

Tom Regan said...

Same thing on YouTube. America's foremost conservative used to be the second Pat B there, behind Pat Benatar (admittedly YouTube is a good source for watching old music videos).
Now, he does not come up in the prompt box at all.
And YouTube is probably even more of a popular monopoly than google.
I guess we had to expect the political bias of the print and TV media to eventually migrate online.

md said...

@James Kabala

"Buchanan" is currently a blocked term.

There is also Rep. Vern Buchanan, who ist quick with lawsuits, has good lawyers and lots of money to keep them busy. Any conclusions are entirely yours...

Otherwise, my explanation stands.

Statsaholic.blogspot.com said...

For those readers too slow to get the "Who? Whom?" explanation provided by Anonymous, it means that Google is against Buchanan not for his Racial Views, but rather for his Anti-Zionist Foreign Policy Views.

Please note that Sergey Brin is a Jew from Russia who is in this Country only due to the efforts of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

Anonymous said...

I just realized that Peter Brimelow kind of looks like a blond Charles Bronson without the mustache.

Jerry said...

In Korea, google's "how to" suggestions, I wonder if these are different in different locations?

tie a tie
kiss
get pregnant
lose weight fast
cook a turkey
solve a rubix cube
make a website
write a resume
download youtube videos
lose weight

The "Pat Bu..." results are exactly as Steve has them.

robert61 said...

When I switch to Swedish defaults (by using a Chrome incognito window in Stockholm), both "pat bu" and "pat buc" yield the misspelling pat buchannon.

A good percentage of the people I know react to Pat Buchanan with visceral loathing. When pressed for a reason, it is usually that he is a "racist", which as we know is the biggest sin you can commit without actually doing something bad - so no surprise that he ends up on the complaint list. It seems weird that the ban should extend to a former president and a Nobel laureate with a different first name, though - even when you type in "james bu..." Any insight into how that might work, MD? Maybe Pat has a relative named James...

I started to say, "It is an odd quirk of the partisan mind that people will utterly reject an otherwise insightful commentator for a single heretical idea." But on reflection, it's no quirk; it's a deep feature of the human mind. Much odder are the TGGP-like characters who, as it were, "go there" across partisan lines. It requires an effort of will to engage with a writer whose core emotional beliefs are very different from your own (maybe the effort is less if you have very low FFM agreeability).

Anonymous said...

Obviously, he's more "dangerous" than others because he appears in the mainstream media too often.
Sailer, Brimelow etc. are equally dangerous, but you don't see them everyday on MSNBC.
The guy who'll watch Pat on the show might be tempted to look up his articles on the internet, so any obstacle to his search reduces potential followers even by a slight percentage. Overtime, it might not be so slight.

On the other hand, "Hitler' and "David Duke" are no danger, they are so discredited noone that could be important someday would ever take them seriously.

Anonymous said...

If we are asking why Hitler is allowed by Goog but Buchanan is not...

Simple, Hitler is history and overall a poster boy for certain groups. If he didnt exist, or isnt the man they say he was, they would have to invent him. Who, whom.

Buchanan otoh is still alive and however remotely offers some sort of political threat.

Its certainly not about 'left' and 'right'.

Peter A said...

I find it odd that Pat Buchanan, of all people, would be blocked. I don't think liberals under the age of 30 even know who he is, he's a fading pol from another era. Really, Buchanan is pretty irrelevant today even in paleo circles. It would be like blocking Father Coughlin. If this is intentional it's probably some programmer with a grudge, maybe a Jew from Florida, not an executive decision.

Anonymous said...

I recommend the use of scroogle:

http://www.scroogle.org

Or alltheweb.com

http://www.alltheweb.com

Anonymous said...

Interesting thread, iSteve!

This is likely some sort of weird personal vendetta. The unintentional blocking of the other famous persons with the last name Buchanan - especially a U.S. President - is classic 21st Century Clueless American edumacation on display.

I bet the spiteful culprit is actually Ivy League, possibly an immigrant or AA - and the culprit simply had no idea that there would be any collateral damage involved with wiping that surname off the drop down list.

Maybe we will see a public message from Google Inc soon announcing that the employee responsible has been, uh, chastised.

Maybe "Morning Joe" Scarborough on MSNBC will pick this story up and it will get mentioned on the air. That would be embarrassing for Goog.

Pat C said...

Hmm, this is kinda strange. I always get to this blog by going to google and typing in steve sailer. I did the same thing this time then clicked on the comments section because I was going to point out that google is the goldman sachs of search engines in the way former employees have positioned themselves in the obama administration. (one of their guys is director of citizen participation.)
So, when I clicked on the comments section link this popped up:

Unable to verify www.google.com as a trusted site
Possible reasons for this error:
Your browser does not recognize the Certificate Authority that issued this site’s certificate
The cites certificate is incomplete due to server misconfiguration
You are connected to a site pretending to be www.google.com, possibly to obtain your credential information
Please notify the sites webmaster about the problem
Before accepting this certificate, you should examine this site’s certificate carefully. Are you willing to accept this certificate for the purpose of identifying the Web site www.google.com?
Examine certificate (you can click on this and get some technical details)
Accept this certificate permanently
Accept this certificate temporarily for this session
Do not accept this certificate and do not connect to this website

Its never happened before and I didn't even have google up as a browser after I clicked on steve's site. I clicked on the examine certificate thing first then clicked cancel. I'm not very tech savy and I have no idea what to make of this.

Pepe said...

His article, "Has Obama lost white America?" is on Drudge as of right now. It's really good and even echoes some of Thomas B. Edsall's article, "Ghost Story" at the New Republic website.

I thought it was pretty much a re-write of this.

BTW 'Islam is...' shows up on Google in the UK no problem.

Bruce Banned said...

"Pat butt" got 5.310.000 results. Go figure....

VG said...

Basically, what this means is that fat virgins who can't spell rubik's cube, and don't know how to tie a tie or cook a turkey, use the Internet the most.

Robert said...

If you do type in "Pat Buchanan" on Google, the first item is a news story that starts like this:

"Pat Buchanan peers into the lily-white souls of disgruntled Bay ...‎ - 47 minutes ago

"You know, I've always thought that Pat Buchanan was a white racist and an anti-Semite who wrote columns that in a not-so-veiled way presented a racist and ...
Charleston City Paper - 11 related articles"

Anonymous said...

It's ok, they're Asian too!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100122/wl_time/08599195464300

Prime said...

yeah i just wrote a post on Buchanan's recent essay "Has Obama lost white America?" and when searching for his website on Google I had to type out his entire name. It will only stall the illiterate.

Anonymous said...

Let's stop using Google, then. There are other search engines.

Anonymous said...

It's definitely a ban on Buchanan, because "pat buche" gets a bunch of "pat butcher foo" prompts.

Anonymous said...

I'm convinced!!!

I can campaign to get you guys removed from google!

I will do it!!!

Marc B said...

"But Google gives you Richard Hoste, Don Black, Kevin MacDonald, Steve Sailer and David Duke. What's up with that?"

Because that cast of characters has already been "discredited" and marginalized by the SLPC and friends. Buchanan still has some level of respectability as a commentator, and is likely the only Paleo who with a large media presence. When he states an opinion, it generally sounds reasonable and fair-minded to most people, particularly if they are unaware of the source.

So they make it easier to access what they deem the crackpot far right because they know those opinions have less traction, so they prefer you to read them and parrot their most virulent texts verbatim. It's Frankfurt School 102

ben g said...

A simpler explanation for all this is that Google gets a list of websites which have been tagged as pornographic or hate sites or bad for children or what have you and removes those from its autosuggest.

Whiskey said...

Steve -- I've worked in a number of start-ups, and have worked alongside a number of future (they were hired by Google) and former Google folks.

The PC attitudes of SWPL are off the charts.

Google puts art work on their home page for Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday, Edvard Munch's birthday, but NOTHING for: Pearl Harbor Day, Veteran's Day, Memorial Day, or Easter for that matter.

As for Buchanon himself, he is neither conservative nor really anyone with much to say. He frequently appears on CNN, and MSNBC (who like him for his support for Obama against Israel and for Muslim nations, against Afghanistan and Iraq wars). Buchanon himself is probably best described as a Vichy Catholic Socialist, so filled with hatred against Jews and Israelis that he will ally himself with his nation's enemies.

Right now there are no Conservative "leaders" -- the Republicans in the Senate and House are empty suit jokes. Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glen Beck (himself fairly nutty) are the default personalities, with media soap boxes.

I expect THAT to change as the Tea Partiers become Republican precinct captains and take over the Republican Party from the ground up. My guess is that Buchanon, nutty lunatic Ron Paul, McCain and his buddy Grahmnesty, and the rest will get tossed aside by a wave of White Middle Class populism, focused on low taxes, lower government control over peoples lives, a big military, and deterrence to technology-empowered enemies (Muslims short term, China long term) by Big Sticks whacking object lessons.

People want relief from taxes, from regulation, economic growth, cheaper energy, and the nutcases Buchanon and Ron Paul have nothing but empty conspiracy theories and partial Obama worship (since Obama too, hates Jews and Israel).

Anonymous said...

Months ago I noted this was going on with the hate crimes bill.

To this day if enter "hate cr" google will not prompt at all.

I think it's because they wanted no one, absolutely no one, to know about this bill that was a blatant violation of the 1st amendment.

I mean, seriously, what other explanation could there be for google, at the vanguard of liberalism and search engines, to censor as popular a PC talking point as 'hate crimes'?

Anonymous said...

Just what has Pat Buchanan been doing lately that would actually interest people to search for him in the last few years? Last time I heard of him doing anything was in the 1990's.

keypusher said...

BTW, I don't read Buchanan much, but this column seems to be ripped right from the pages of iSteve.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=122710

Tom Piatak said...

Whiskey,

The name is Buchanan, not "Buchanon." You really should learn how to spell.

You should learn how to think, too: http://www.vdare.com/piatak/081101_buchanan.htm

Baloo said...

Yes, I suppose Obama especially hate Rahm Emmanuel.

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of the situation at Borders Books, where the conservative or politically rightwing books will be hidden away, on top of shelves, etc. at election time, and books of the other kind (the anti-Palin "Going Rouge" is a good example)will be featured prominently. I'm not so sure its some kind of company policy...do the lower ranking Google employeees (i.e. middle management)have the ability to influence Google searches the way a bookstore assistant manager can determine book placement?

headache said...

Whiskey sez;...since Obama too, hates Jews and Israel

Mmm, Obama got bankrolled by Soros who presumably does not take goy seriously, he was managed by Axelrod and his secretary is an Israeli officer. But I guess he hates Jews?? I'm annoyed Whiskey thinks I'm so stupid. WTF

Tanstaafl said...

Commentary should publish an article titled "Why Jews Hate Buchanan".

Mr. Anon said...

"Whiskey said...

My guess is that Buchanon, nutty lunatic Ron Paul, McCain and his buddy Grahmnesty, and the rest will get tossed aside by a wave of White Middle Class populism,..."

Yeah, because I always confuse Buchanan (learn to spell the man's name, damn it!) with McCain, or Lindsay Graham with Ron Paul. Why, they're all practically indistinguishable. You are truly delusional, Whiskey.

Idiot.

Eric Rasmusen said...

It's good to note this kind of thing, but we should remember that Google is a private company that is giving us an amazingly good product for free. This is one of the ways they can get a reward from us. It reduces the value of their product slightly, but I don't begrudge them the right to try to influence our politics.

Of course, it would be better if they were transparent about it. Or maybe this is just a perk of people who work at Google--- that if you're one of the drudges, you're allowed to fiddle with the searches some so long as you don't get too outrageous.

Kai Carver said...

Good answer md. Let's not be too paranoid: maybe it isn't Google that's evil, it's us!

But Google does need to be more open about their algorithms and about their forbidden term lists.*

Google recently said the "islam is" problem is a bug. It works fine for me on google.com accessed from Paris, France: "islam is" autosuggest list.

A link can be used to see the suggested list for any typed sequence. We can see that the "bug" remains for other sequences:
pat buc vs. pat bu
i hate vs. i ha or i love
adolf h vs. adolf vs.

*this idea of a "list of all items that cannot be listed" is nicely paradoxical here. Suppose there's something we want never to appear anywhere... Surely we need a well-documented list of such things to appear somewhere!

l said...

Google News has 6 returns for "Ellie Light"

TCO said...

I wonder if there is some feature where people can complain or do ratings or something that affects this? I have seen the rating wars on Amazon. Also there is "Google bombing". Is it possible that some group that doesn't like Pat B much (say the kind of Koskids that Googlebomb) has exploited something within Google's algorithm. Just a possibility that is other than some Google employee manually filtering out Pat.

Also, this seems to be happening enough so that people are starting to note it (for Pat, Climategate, the arguably validly censored terms, etc.) so that it is starting to become a detriment to Google. Don't know what they can do though. If they go complete uncensored, do they get taken of Library computers?

So Gooish! said...

"It's good to note this kind of thing, but we should remember that Google is a private company that is giving us an amazingly good product for free. This is one of the ways they can get a reward from us. It reduces the value of their product slightly, but I don't begrudge them the right to try to influence our politics."

Google isn't providing services for free. We pay for Google through everything we buy since Google collects ad revenues and commissions from just about every company. As you all know, companies add the cost of advertizing to their products. So, whatever you buy, you're paying for the product plus the cost of ads. Since much of the ad costs are going to Google, we are paying for 'free' services from google. Similarly, what government provides us for 'free' has actually been paid by us through taxes--or will have to be paid by our children.

And even if we were to argue that Google is providing all this good stuff for free, what will be the social, intellectual, and political implications of ONE company dominating so much news, information, wealth, influence, clout, and leverage?
Google isn't one of the many players on a level playing field but is becoming to the whole of internet what Ebay was to internet auction--the only player in town.
With every 'free' stuff it gives us, it gains more power. It gains power over us, and we grow more dependent on and more obedient to Google.

Big Geek Is Not Only Watching You but Goading You, Manipulating You, Playing Tricks on You, Nudging You, and Fudging You.

Harry Baldwin said...

If a disaffected crank with programming capabilities is responsible for blocking Pat Buchanan from Google, I would nominate Charles "Little Green Footballs" Johnson, or one of his minions, as a likely suspect. Buchanan is his bete noire.

Anonymous said...

Now I want to know why Rob the Bouncer gets this treatment. "rob the bouncer," "standing on the box," and "clublife" all fail to get anything in the dropdown.

WEIRD.

http://standingonthebox.blogspot.com/

I just can't imagine whatever morons are blocking Buchanan being savvy enough to spot a blog like Rob's as being a threat to their kampf. So what gives?

sj071 said...

I don't have a handy bookmark lying around but I seem to remember reading that US Army is in charge of providing electricity for the Google.com?

Hopefully it's not that time of the month for SteveStasi.

p.s.Google + DNA + Singularity... a lot of fun.

rob said...

Pat Buttram? Really, that's a dude's name? It sounds like the stagename for a gay porn star.

Allen said...

When Google blacklisted the word "climategate" from their suggestion list, I switched to Bing and have not looked back. At the time both Bing and Yahoo suggested it after only a few letters, while Google would suggest "climate Guatemala" after you typed in all 11 letters. I resent having some drone at Google censoring results.

It's hard to believe that md's explanation applies to "climategate." Yes, it appears as a suggestion now, but back when the scandal first broke it did not appear, and didn't until a day or so after Google came under heavy criticism from some of the skeptic blogs.

This new example just confirms to me that leaving Google was the right thing to do.

spacehabitats said...

Very interesting.
I tried playing with another controversial political figure and typed in "Ron Paul".

There doesn't seem to be any attempt at dropping him down the memory hole, but the suggested searches and their order seems to be rather bizarre.

"ron paul bruno" (referring to an embarrassing incident in which comedian/satirist Sacha Baron Cohen manages to fool Dr. Paul into granting him an interview)came in fourth out of ten on Google's list. This was in spite of the fact that it had by far the fewest total hits (about one half of the next lowest total).
"ron paul bruno" doesn't even show up as an option on Bing or Yahoo's lists. And, BTW, neither does "ron paul racist" (1.14 M hits) which ranked eighth on Google ahead of "daily show" (10.10 M) and "health care" (4.05 M).

I can't conclude from that alone that there is conscious animus here. But results like that, when applied to a controversial political figure, certainly should at least raise some suspicion.

It would be one thing if this "feature" seemed to be helpful in any predictable manner. But how does it "help" a user to suggest a search phrase whose key word (i.e. "bruno")does not even appear until the fourth search results' page?

Instead it seems that Google is trying to "help" its users to become aware of an incident that normally would have dropped into the obscurity it deserves.

James Kabala said...

spacehabitats: I've heard it claimed (whether truthfully or not I don't know) that the prompts are based not on frequency of hits but frequency of searches. Are people really still searching for "Ron Paul Bruno," though? I wouldn't think so, but you never know.

Ivan Lapis said...

Ithink I should also pointout that Microsoft has bought (or maybejust merely partnered with) Yahoo! search that's why they deliver (almost) everything with the same results.

Anonymous said...

Absolute nonsense.

How tightly is your tinfoil hat screwed on?

Anonymous said...

Conspiracy nuts are like religious nuts. They can't see past the surface of things to the truth underneath so they make up wacky theories that reveal more about themselves than what they think they are analyzing.

Curvaceous Carbon-based Life Form said...

"Conspiracy nuts are like religious nuts. They can't see past the surface of things to the truth underneath so they make up wacky theories that reveal more about themselves than what they think they are analyzing"

Conspiracy deniers are motivated to see to it that average Joes don't look too deeply into the depths of things, so they make wild accusations of insanity in hopes that average Joes won't dare look too closely at the Theorists' evidence.

sj071 said...

'Conspiracy nuts are like religious nuts. They can't see past...'

You are Cass Sunstein and I claim my five pounds.

Anonymous said...

Seems that Buchanan is back on Google autocomplete.

Gilbert Ratchet said...

I just noticed today that autocomplete does suggest Pat Buchanan... with the second suggestion being "pat buchanan racist."

Indeed: Stay classy, Google!

Anonymous said...

Gov't-corporate crushing free speech, yet another violation of our rights. The gov’t constantly violates our rights.

They violate the 1st Amendment by caging protesters and banning books like "America Deceived II".

They violate the 4th and 5th Amendment by allowing TSA to grope you.

They violate the entire Constitution by starting undeclared wars.

Impeach Obama.

Last link of "America Deceived II" before it is completely banned:

http://www.amazon.com/America-Deceived-II-Possession-interrogation/dp/1450257437

Anonymous said...

Going back a few years, if one typed the word "asshole" into a Google search engine and then hit "I'm feeling lucky", a picture of George W. Bush appeared on your screen. Probably just coincidence.