Is Google Blocking FreeRepublic.com?

Poe.com ^ | February 22, 2009 | Richard Lawrence Poe

[Richard Poe]

CONSERVATIVE COMANCHE blogger David Yeagley is enjoying a record surge in Web traffic, following the redesign of his BadEagle.com Web site. But you'd never know it from reading our Google Analytics report.

While most traffic counters show Yeagley's readership skyrocketing since the January 14 relaunch, Google Analytics shows Yeagley in a nose-dive. Part of the problem appears to be that Google is ignoring any traffic we get from the popular, conservative discussion board FreeRepublic.com.

As the designer of Yeagley's new site, I was pleased to see a big traffic spike on January 31, two weeks after our relaunch. The spike came largely from FreeRepublic.

The charts above -- both from WordPress Stats -- indicate that David Yeagley's BadEagle.com blog got a spike of 1,078 page views on January 31, at least 413 of which came from FreeRepublic.com. The chart below -- from Google Analytics -- shows no spike on January 31, and no sign of any traffic from FreeRepublic.com.



On January 30, a Freeper calling herself Sioux-san had posted Dr. Yeagley's article "Michael Medved and `White Women'" at FreeRepublic.com. She graciously provided a link back to BadEagle.com, where the original article appeared.

Over the next 24 hours, some 413 Freepers followed that link back to BadEagle, according to our internal traffic counter WordPress Stats. In its list of referring Web sites, WordPress clearly indicated that those 413 page views came from FreeRepublic, and at least 326 of them specifically from the article posted at FreeRepublic by Sioux-san.

Strangely, our Google Analytics account showed no sign of any visits from FreeRepublic during the same 24-hour period. Not a single visit. Not a single Freeper. Not one.

Indeed, while Site Meter and WordPress Stats showed a big spike in our traffic on January 31, Google Analytics showed a drop.

With its massive traffic, FreeRepublic ought to be a kingmaker on the Internet. It ought to be able to make or break other Web sites by choosing which sites to grace with its traffic and which sites to ignore.

Our experience with the mysterious, vanishing traffic spike of January 31 may indicate that liberal Internet gatekeepers have found a way to curtail FreeRepublic's influence -- and the influence of conservative Web sites generally.

[KarinG1]

Likewise if they expect referrer logging. I alway disable that.

[Richard Poe]

KarinG1 writes: Forgive my ignorance, but I don’t see why Google Analytics would know anything about traffic coming to your site from FR.

It is their job to know what traffic is coming to their clients' sites, and from where. It is precisely in order to learn such information that Web sites sign up for Google Analytics accounts in the first place.

The page I reproduced above from Google Analytics claims to show from what sites BadEagle.com received traffic between January 11 and February 10, 2009. However, the information it presents is wrong, because it ignores the traffic which BadEagle received from FreeRepublic during that time period.

[Candor7]

Thanks for the scoogle reference. They are now my default search engine. No cookies, search log deleted within 48 hours so that your IP address is not revealed?

Great stuff.

One more step towards fascist proofing.

[Candor7]

The scroogle search site is 4 times faster than Google. Man it is FAST!

[familyop]

I wasn’t implying anything about the mentioned sites. If you want more search engine traffic, read the search engines’ documentation on how to get it.

I once administered a far more hated high-traffic site than yours. It was a truly conservative anti-feminism, anti-romanticism site. ...even published analyses and citations about Susan B. Anthony’s work against traditional family structure, religion and capitalism (also Beecher, Hull, Woodhull, all). The PLA (Chinese government) hit it a few hundred thousand times, then complained to our US Government about us violating “women’s” “human” “rights.” Threats from Democrats and Republicans of the social left were common. Academics with the CWA even argued (unsuccessfully) against the publications.

[familyop]

Yes, and if you want more privacy, do

https://ssl.scroogle.org/

But if you want that search engine proxy to continue, donate to them. I have no personal pecuniary (monetary) interest in that site, BTW. ...just think it’s cool.

[Richard Poe]

familyop writes: Google is also analytically equal about how they treat various sites.

Sadly, what you write is untrue. Google itself now admits that it applies subjective, personal judgments in assigning greater or lesser "value" to Web pages, and thus greater or lesser value to links from those pages.

See "Google Cranks Up the Consensus Engine" by Andrew Orlowski in The Register of December 12, 2008.

[familyop]

And you’re welcome!

[KarinG1]

If you would please continue to indulge me, and I appreciate your patience, how exactly would they know where I came to your site from? I don’t allow their scripts to run on my computer and I don’t allow referrer logging, so it seems to me that they would have difficulty tracking connections from my network. If they are doing so I’d really like to know how they do it so that I can put a stop to it.

[George Smiley]

ixquick is a metasearch engine that doesn't keep records of what you look up.

Unlike Google.

[Syncro]

At scroogle, site: freerepublic brings up a bunch of negative stuff.

[muawiyah]

I do hope you aren't in the crowd who wants the news articles about the polls regarding attitudes towards Darwin relegated to RELIGION.

BTW, I read ALL, not just specific forums.

[muawiyah]

Haven't checked since December but a couple of my FR threads were in the top 10 for SANTA CLAUS.

Which is truly frightening!

[Candor7]

Seriously though. Scroogle is really the fastest search engine I have ever used. It doesn’t have to record all
your personal details or download ads onto your PC.

It just zaps you the bare bones search return!

I really do appreciate the reference link
it makes a huge difference.

http://www.scroogle.com

With the Obama fascist web patrol on line, it will behoove all freepers to minimize their web footprint.

I may even go to a proxy IP address set up.

We should set up a thread on how freepers can minmize their web spoor traces.

[SumProVita]

The Scroogle Scraper is GREAT! ;-)

[Boucheau]

I do quite a bit of SEO work and this may be the result of the absence of rel=”nofollow” tags for outbound links.

Google is trying to limit link “spamming” by “asking” forums, the developers of forum/blog/cms, etc., software to include the rel=”nofollow” tags.

It became common practice to “spam” forums with links to your site to build “link popularity”, traffic and to ultimately rank higher in the search engines.

This often works against Google’s relevancy goals.

I only looked at the source briefly but I didn’t find any such code.

Maybe Jim has another method.

My two cents.

[KarinG1]

You aren’t talking about click-throughs from ads are you? I’m not sure, but I don’t think FR displays any ads. The reason I’m not sure is that I don’t ever see any ads from any site. There are ways to avoid that. If that isn’t how you expect Google to track me, I still don’t understand what you’re getting at.

[tlb]

>>>I do hope you aren’t in the crowd who wants the news articles about the polls regarding attitudes towards Darwin relegated to RELIGION. BTW, I read ALL, not just specific forums.

I also read ALL. I’m open to looking at any views. But yes, if the spam is a sermon on Genesis masquerading as a story on Darwin, RELIGION seems the place for it.

More generally these blog editorials are not NEWS by any stretch of the imagination. Placing these spamming sermons on equal footing with NEWS and superior to the various threads on actual science which are automatically pushed off into CHAT is humiliating to this site’s credibility, not to mention violations of it’s own rules.

If the powers that be choose to permit and encourage this, you have to expect some fallout. I don’t know if colleges are or are not filtering FR. But if the censors can point to this it certainly would make it easier for them to do so.

[Boucheau]

Google counts but doesn’t give “credit” for all links coming into your site.

Google knows where the hits came from. It just isn’t including them in its algorithm.

Take the same site and examine the difference in the numbers of incoming links or backlinks using Yahoo! and then Google!

Google doesn’t list NEARLY as many as Yahoo!.

Google is “picky” about what incoming links are considered relevant to their relevancy goals—ugh!

Remember, people, Google is a PRIVATE company.

It has no obligation to list, link or promote your site.

I think it does a good job at a VERY difficult undertaking.

Even with something like 150 PHD’s on the payroll it is a monumental task to deliver the number of accurate search results and services that they provide.