Posted on 06/11/2016 12:22:52 PM PDT by Kaslin
Google says no no no, and … they may well be telling the truth. SourceFed offered up a video j’accuse Thursday that got enough attention from Google to prompt a flat denial — although, as you’ll see, they should have outsourced the effort to industry experts. Matt Lieberman compares the auto-fill suggestions given by Yahoo and Bing search engines to those produced by Google for queries about Hillary Clinton, and sees a rather dramatic difference.
Is this evidence that Google is cooking its responses to bolster Hillary Clinton’s presidential chances? Or did SourceFed cherry-pick the query types to get these dramatic differences? How does the Autocomplete functions differ at the major search sites … and why would an autofill function be the target of manipulation at all?
Did Google Manipulate Search for Hillary?
If true, Lieberman argues, it betrays the relationship between Google and its consumers. “I no longer have the same confidence” in the system, Lieberman says, and calls this a serious ethical breach that even Google’s employees would find shocking and disturbing.
That brings us to Google’s response, issued yesterday:
“Google Autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause,” said a Google spokesperson in an email to the Washington Times.
“Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how Autocomplete works. Our Autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person’s name. More generally, our autocomplete predictions are produced based on a number of factors including the popularity of search terms,” said the statement.
This response is so generic and vague that it’s easy to dismiss it as corporate-speak. However, others offered more extensive and perhaps convincing explanations of what SourceFed found. CNN’s David Goldman reported that this is nothing more than an indication of Google’s superior algorithms, which are intended to screen out false information from Autocomplete. He links to an essay from Rhea Drysdale, a CEO of a search-engine optimization company, claiming that SourceFed cherry-picked the examples:
The examples that SourceFed chose are factually incorrect. Hillary Clinton has not been charged with a crime. She has not been indicted. Google (GOOGL, Tech30) knows this, and its algorithm actually filters out inaccurate information in autocomplete.
“Our autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person’s name,” a Google spokeswoman said. “Google autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause. Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how autocomplete works.”
To counter SourceFed’s claim, Drysdale showed similar results for Donald Trump, in which “Donald Trump lawsuits” did not show up in autocomplete results when entering “Donald Trump la” into Google. But “Donald Trump laughing” did, despite the fact that far more people are searching about the presumptive Republican nominee’s legal battles. …
By typing in just “Hillary Clinton,” Google presents plenty of autocomplete suggestions with negative connotations, including “email” and “Benghazi.”
Searches for those two terms are way more popular than either of the cherry-picked searches that SourceFed included in its video. Google understands that “Hillary Clinton email” and “Hillary Clinton Benghazi” are synonymous with potential criminal charges or indictments, Drysdale said.
Be sure to read Drysdale’s entire post, which has plenty of its own screenshots to back up her claims. Why do searches in Bing and Yahoo produce identical and different autocomplete suggestions? Drysdale explains that the algorithms in use for both sites are less complex and more literal than Google’s. “I’ve been getting paid to manipulate Google’s search results for years,” Drysdale says in her angry rebuttal to SourceFed, and knows its operations and limitations. In response to SourceFed’s conspiracy-tinged accusations, Drysdale makes one of her own:
Because SourceFed told you to look up these queries, they’ve just manipulated Google’s search results.
Think about that for a minute. Google Autocomplete is powered by user behavior, personalization, trends, and lots of other factors. By telling hundreds of thousands of people (and growing) to search for these queries, SourceFed has just sent Google data supporting a massive spike of interest in these terms.
It’ll be very interesting to see what happens with these queries from here.
As someone who has been paid to to manage online reputations and displace negative Google search results for years, I have to wonder if there was a different motivation behind this video, because it was either very poorly done or very strategically executed. Whatever the reason, I hope if you’ve read this far you now have a better understanding of how Google Autocomplete works and that this has absolutely nothing to do with favoring anyone.
That also seems a bit far-fetched, but it may have had its intended impact. SourceFed and Lieberman responded to this with an explanation of why and how it produced the video. While promising a more substantive follow-up next week, one does get a hint of a possible walk-back in the midst of an entertaining if self-serving narrative of the impact criticism has had on their effort:
SourceFed Responds: Google + Clinton Follow Up
There are three possibilities. SourceFed could have stumbled onto bias from Google, or it didn’t take the time to properly research the potential reasons for these differences, or … it wanted to launch an attack on Google on behalf of those opposed to Hillary. The second option seems much more likely than the other two, especially given how esoteric this function is.
That brings me to this questuion: why? All due respect to Lieberman’s research on behavioral impact from online search results, that’s not what we’re discussing. The autocomplete function merely assists the entering of search criteria; it doesn’t force the user to use one of the suggestions. I suspect most people don’t feel themselves limited or persuaded by autofill functions, but would proceed to launch the search they actually intended to conduct. If Google really wanted to manipulate the search process, it would aim at the results … and nothing in either video provides any evidence of manipulation in that function, partisan or otherwise.
Either way, there are thankfully a number of options for online searches. Perhaps people should spread their efforts across all of them as a matter of course anyway.
The hell tbey are not.
I see it my search results.
When I use my devices, I get completely different results than I do when using someone elses device or work computers.
Sure, you’re not! I noticed your fingers are crossed when you say that.
Google has half the credibility of Dorkbama the Muslim Dick.
I wonder if it’s possible to “poison the autocomplete well” by putting out sufficient high-profile vituperation about a candidate. Since, as they say, they filter out vituperation, that might leave Trump behind more than Hillary.
This might reflect nothing more than the fact that Trump attracts more explicit hate.
Well that sounds like they are using their record of your searches to customize what you get.
And — just because an entity is hated doesn’t mean it’s bad.
More people explicitly hate God than explicitly hate Satan, but is absolute virtue up for a vote?
We can get so hung up over artifacts that we miss wide open doors pounding with frustration on the shut ones. Google isn’t the way to evangelize for Donald Trump. Fine. Let’s use other ways. Donald himself seems to be a master of Twitter.
Yes. And google will increase your chocolate ration from 25 to 20 grams a month.
>> Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how Autocomplete works. Our Autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person’s name. <<
So Google ADMITS that they are inserting themselves as judges of what content they consider “truthful.”
Hitler: We are not being hurting Jews
0bama: We are not letting terrorists in!
Colonel Sanders: Your chickens are safe with us!
Unless you use an “incognito” or private tab when you do your search, your previous personal search history has a big impact on the results you see. That’s been the case for a long time.
They must have changed their standards very recently. Kamau Bell used to do a routine where he googled “Pat Buchanan” and the first suggestion was “Pat Buchanan racist.” He may have typed in an r, but there was no ban on negative results coming up first. “Donald Trump r” also, according to various accounts, yielded “Donald Trump racist.” Now it doesn’t.
Is Hillary Clinton left handed
Is Hillary Clinton vegan
Is Hillary Clinton dead
Is Hillary Clinton good
Is Hillary Clinton a superdelgate
Is Hillary Clinton going to win
Is Hillary Clinton running for president in 2016
Is Donald Trump married
Is Donald Trump left handed
Is Donald Trump running for president
Is Donald Trump dead
Is Donald Trump electable
Is Donald Trump a draft dodger
Is Donald Trump a democrat
Is Donald Trump racist cnn
Is Donald Trump racist quora
Their statement may be accurate but the determination of offensive is subjective. Also the more important problem is systematic bias within the code at Google. There's little chance that the code has any blatant "if Hillary Clinton then" statements in it. But any reasonably clever programmer can make sure there are equivalent code statements to protect liberals from criticism while trashing conservatives.
Yes, Google is Satan.
He’s really mean and doesn’t have good pictures on holidays.
You can tell the anti military, anti conservative, anti AMERICAN bias with the holiday cartoons they post.
I delete everything googlE that I find. Ixquick is my search engine.
My paper airplane webpage is practically invisible in Google search and I have a Google AdSense account linked to it. Type in paper airplanes and look for xplanes4u.com and see how many abstract other things pop up before you ever see xplanes4u.com.
Google has apparently found it pleases more users that way.
Google isn’t always the cleanest search possible. I find it repeating many older results on new pages of results, and wish that they had an option to suppress such repeats, because I have to keep paging more than I might otherwise want in order to find something that is more obscure.
You don’t understand what mean is.
I had trouble with my lap top and had to use my husbands to google how to fix it....he has yahoo and when I searched for freerepublic it showed everything but.....
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