Google blacklists American Thinker and reverses it after its blacklisting of conservative sites is exposed

American Thinker ^ | 07/22/2020 | Thomas Lifson

[SeekAndFind]

Yesterday, what Google calls a “technical error” exposed a blacklist of multiple conservative sites, including American Thinker.  After the blacklisting became obvious and generated commentary among conservative publications (and crickets among the dominant MSM propaganda organs), it appears to have been reversed.

The blacklist became blatantly obvious when a Google search for “American Thinker” revealed no items from our site, but rather articles elsewhere that mentioned us. John Eidson did a screen grab during the blacklist:

This morning, the ban on material beginning www.americanthinker.com was no longer visible:

A Tweet by Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller, also blacklisted, shows how searches for news events or public figures exclude material from blacklisted sites:

An experiment on whether Google is blocking search results for conservative sites. Randomly picked Stefan Halper as a search term. NYT and WaPo have 96 returns combined. No results on @DailyCaller, though we've probably published his name 100 times. pic.twitter.com/5xUZaiZQeH — Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) July 21, 2020

Google is employing bafflegab to explain away the blacklist, as Rudy Takala of Mediaite reports:

In a jargon-filled statement, Google said it was looking into the issue, but failed to offer any explanation. “We are aware of an issue with the site: command that may fail to show some or any indexed pages from a website,” the company said in a post published on Twitter Tuesday afternoon. “We are investigating this and any potentially related issues.”

In response to an inquiry from Mediaite, a spokesman for Google added, “This issue affected a number of sites representing a range of different content and viewpoints.

[ClearCase_guy]

Lunch counters cannot discriminate against blacks.
Bakeries have to bake cakes for homosexuals.
Media companies can censor anyone who has political views they don’t like.

[SunkenCiv]

Partisan Media Shills update.

[rktman]

They’ll find another means to try to screw with conservatives. Opposing ideas and ideals are NOT allowed.

[MCEscherHammer]

Comes right up on Google now on Google, as well as Bing, and DuckDuckGo...

But, this shadow banning crap seems to be a trend...

DJT is going to have to deal with these media scoundrels in his 2nd term!

[I want the USA back]

A search engine should NOT fiddle with the results! It should scrub profanity and porn, and display the rest without bias!

Ah, but that’s the optimist in me speaking! The realist in me knows that the tech giants were created and funded by hate-America liberals, who planned it this way from the start.

Google changes your search string. Search for:
blacks killing cops

it is changed to:

cops killing blacks.

[Theo]

This was a thing yesterday. TheGatewayPundit.com (a site I help with) wasn’t coming up in Google searches. Yes, there were Wikipedia results and NewsGuard results ... but no link directly to TheGatewayPundit.com

Google intentionally removed these right-leaning sites from their SERPs (search engine results pages).

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I am almost positive FR was blacklisted, too.

There was a post on June 27 about the movie "The Seventh Cross." It sounded good, so I bought the DVD and watched the movie. After doing that, I wanted to thank the original poster, "simpson96," for his fine recommendation.

I went to Google Advanced Search and ran ""Seventh Cross" site:freerepublic.com," but Google told me it could find no search results. I thought that was very curious as this search technique is reliable and I KNEW that I had recently seen the Seventh Cross posting on FR.

So, based on this AT article today, I just re-ran the Google Advanced Search and, et voilà, I now get the search results I was expecting!

By the way, it was an EXCELLENT film and very apropos to our times with the State grabbing all power in Germany and the German people dutifully falling in line with the tyrannical state. Is it just a coincidence that search results for a film exposing State Tyranny were suppressed by Google?

It could be that I made a mistake in the original search, but I'm quite certain I ran the exact same search as I just did a couple minutes ago. The search results are quite different.

Here's the link to the original FR post: Scene from "The Seventh Cross" (1944 - Spencer Tracy, Hume Cronyn)

[Joachim]

Another apparent effect of the ban or “glitch”:

Late Monday and early Tuesday, directly typing www.citizenfreepress was generating no completion suggestions in Chrome. (And of course no search results linking to the site were being returned.) I had to type the whole address to get there.

Interesting glitch. Which left of center sites were affected? Have not heard of any.

[M Kehoe]

Google is evil.

5.56mm

[ClearCase_guy]

If you do a Google search for “white couples” and view the Images that result, you’ll see mostly interracial couples.

The search engine doesn’t show you what you’re looking for — it shows you what the company wants you to see.

[lowbridge]

Interesting how this “technical error” affected only conservative opinion sites.

[RitchieAprile]

not what I see...

[lowbridge]

Some months ago i was trying to look for an old article posted here on FR. I couldnt recall the title of the piece or the author. But i could recall a few words and phrases within the article. I used google. Among the keywords i used in my search was the word “freerepublic” in order to make sure I would get results from here.

Instead, all it provided me were links to liberal sources, abc, cbs, nbc, cnn, msnbc, npr, dozens of leftist sites and blogs, etc. The usual suspects. None of which even had the specific article i was looking for. I scrolled and scrolled, looking for a link to Freerepublic, but there was none.

So i went to duckduckgo and did a search using the very SAME keywords i used in my google search, including the word “freerepublic”. Bingo. It not only provided me with the article on FR at the very top of the results, but provided several other different articles on FR about the same subject.

[Ohioan]

The forked keyborders at Google would have fit in very well in the Bolshevik and Nazi make believe worlds of the 1930s & 1940s. They show no respect for the concepts involved in intellectual freedom of debate.

Absurdity At Google

[ProtectOurFreedom]

So I tried your "white couples" search and found this white couple who identify as black:

[Reily]

Could we just identify them as insane and call it a day?

[ProtectOurFreedom]

"Today's Toons" by Pookie has an apt analogy meme.

Can you imagine the phone company listening to your all of your phone conversations and shutting off your service if they didn't like what you were saying? Or the old Directory Assistance / Information not giving you the name and number of a business you were seeking?

[Professional]

Thanks! That is VERY powerful MEME!

[MayflowerMadam]

Yesterday, Google wasn’t returning and results if you queried “Conservative Treehouse” or “The Last Refuge”. Duckduckgo showed it as the first hit.