Google’s global warming search bias

February 11, 2018 by David Wojick, Ph.D., 11 Comments

The rumor that Google has tuned its search algorithm to work against the skeptics of climate change alarmism appears to be true. Searches on prominent skeptics systematically yield more negative attacks than positive information. This cannot be an accident. It may well be illegal, given Google’s deep financial interest in alarmism.

It all started when I did a Google search on myself. This is not something that I usually do, but I was dealing with some new people and I figured they might look me up, so I looked to see what they would see. What I found was startlingly negative.

It is said that when people are looking for introductory information the first Google results page is all that counts, so let’s stick with that. My first page has 10 items on it. The very first item is an attack piece from something strangely called DeSmogBlog. This is basically a Canadian public relations outfit that does little except attack skeptics of climate change alarmism. It turns out that Google loves DeSmogBlog.

You would think that the billion dollar Google search algorithm would look for the most recent information, but the DeSmog piece looks to be from 2012. Moreover, the third, fifth, seventh and tenth items are also all attack pieces, two of which are actually dated in 2012. So Google had to go back almost 6 years, in order to lard my first page with half of the items being personal attacks.

Clearly this is not accidental.........To Read More.....

Google’s global warming search bias — Part 2

February 16, 2018 by David Wojick, Ph.D., 2 Comments 

In my previous article I found that Google search results for prominent skeptics of climate change alarmism included a lot of negative material. Four or five negative items out of ten or twelve on the first page of results were typical. This raises the question of whether Google’s search algorithm is tuned to find and present negative items on skeptics.

Another possibility is that these search results merely reflect the fact that there is a lot of negative material on both sides. The climate change debate is indeed acrimonious and feelings run high.
To test this alternative I did Google searches on a number of prominent alarmists. What I found was that there were very few negative items, in fact in most cases there were none at all. This clearly suggests that Google’s search algorithm likes climate alarmists and dislikes climate skeptics, which has been rumored for some time.

Here are the first page results that I got for Google searches for prominent climate alarmists. A lot of negative material has been written about every one of them.

James Hansen
12 items, zero negative
Michael Mann
10 items, one negative
Ben Santer
10 items, zero negative
Susan Solomon
10 items, zero negative
Gavin Schmidt
10 items, 2 negative
Bill McKibben
12 items, zero negative
Naomi Oreskes
10 items, one negative

In contrast, our search results for skeptics typically contained 4 or 5 negative items on the first page. Thus there is a dramatic difference in how the Google search algorithm treats climate alarmists (positively) versus skeptics of alarmism (negatively)...........To Read More....