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> Google obsessively tweaks all manner of other links in the index Via algorithm or manual intervention? I thought they were dead set against manual tweaks. I

by nhebb 15y ago

> Google obsessively tweaks all manner of other links in the index Via algorithm or manual intervention? I thought they were dead set against manual tweaks. I imagine their todo list of algorithm improvements is never ending, so I'm not too quick to judge them on this. It is a PR issue for Google, though. If someone is searching for Santorum, there's a pretty good chance they're a cultural conservative. When they see listings like this at the top of the search results, do they come away with a worse perception of Santorum or of Google? I wouldn't vote for Santorum, but I didn't really like seeing "frothy mix of lube and fecal matter". C'mon, Google, I just ate.

scarmig 15y ago
Well, come on. If you're googling a disgusting substance like santorum, don't be surprised if you get a gross result. Which is to say: santorum is now a word in its own right. It's not a Google bomb in any sense: people can and do use it all the time to refer to the aforementioned substance. A month ago, that definition was definitely the more relevant, and five years from now, when the Santorum flash in the pan is over, that'll again become the most relevant item. What you're asking for is for Google to censor a word for the sake of a powerful man, who it happened to be named after.
- tptacek 15y ago
  Black is white. Pants are shirts. Minitrue called, "Santorum" is a substance and not a person. The fact that this particular association is notorious almost entirely on the Internet, and that any notoriety it has achieved outside the Internet falls directly from its success on the Internet... well, that's not relevant. We have always used the word santorum as a common noun.
  - scarmig 15y ago
    "Minitrue"? Really? I think a lot of the distaste people have for santorum is that there was an active campaign to coin and propagate it. But lots of words have that heritage: if someone looks up "pegging" on Google, no one gets upset when it turns out to be an invented but widely adopted sex term. Savage's hostile intent, though, has a major role in people thinking santorum's an illegitimate word, even though no one can point to any real metric by which Santorum should trump santorum; we all like to feign genteel shock at crassness. But we can't let our emotions, be they anti-Santorum or anti-Savage, dictate whether Google should manually intervene to change the ordering of the search. That road leads to 1984.

by nhebb 15y ago

scarmig 15y ago

Well, come on. If you're googling a disgusting substance like santorum, don't be surprised if you get a gross result. Which is to say: santorum is now a word in its own right. It's not a Google bomb in any sense: people can and do use it all the time to refer to the aforementioned substance. A month ago, that definition was definitely the more relevant, and five years from now, when the Santorum flash in the pan is over, that'll again become the most relevant item. What you're asking for is for Google to censor a word for the sake of a powerful man, who it happened to be named after.

tptacek 15y ago
Black is white. Pants are shirts. Minitrue called, "Santorum" is a substance and not a person. The fact that this particular association is notorious almost entirely on the Internet, and that any notoriety it has achieved outside the Internet falls directly from its success on the Internet... well, that's not relevant. We have always used the word santorum as a common noun.
- scarmig 15y ago
  "Minitrue"? Really? I think a lot of the distaste people have for santorum is that there was an active campaign to coin and propagate it. But lots of words have that heritage: if someone looks up "pegging" on Google, no one gets upset when it turns out to be an invented but widely adopted sex term. Savage's hostile intent, though, has a major role in people thinking santorum's an illegitimate word, even though no one can point to any real metric by which Santorum should trump santorum; we all like to feign genteel shock at crassness. But we can't let our emotions, be they anti-Santorum or anti-Savage, dictate whether Google should manually intervene to change the ordering of the search. That road leads to 1984.