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Me#1You#10
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Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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 Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 6:40 pm Post subject: Google Murtha search skews the news |
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Intentional? I'm not sure, but look how this AP report is presented using a Google news search on "Murtha"...
| Google News wrote: | DoD: Probe into civilian deaths incomplete
MarineTimes.com, VA - 1 hour ago
... John Murtha, D-Pa., was correct in saying Marines killed innocent women and children “in cold blood” during the attacks last November. ...
DoD: Probe into civilian deaths incomplete
Marine Corps Times (subscription) - 2 hours ago
... John Murtha, D-Pa., was correct in saying Marines killed innocent women and children “in cold blood” during the attacks last November. ... |
Now here's the actual text from the linked story...
| Quote: | DoD: Probe into civilian deaths incomplete
By Lolita C. Baldor
Associated Press
Military officials said Thursday that a criminal investigation into a firefight in western Iraq that left at least 15 civilians dead is not complete, but they did not dispute a congressman’s charges that the attack by Marines was far worse than originally reported.
Officials in the Pentagon and at U.S. Central Command declined to say whether Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., was correct in saying Marines killed innocent women and children “in cold blood” during the attacks last November.
MarineCorpsTimes.com - cont'd |
Inadvertent misrepresentation or deliberate and malicious editing? You tell me...
Last edited by Me#1You#10 on Sat May 20, 2006 6:03 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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dusty
Admiral
Joined: 27 Aug 2004
Posts: 1264
Location: East Texas
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| Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 10:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | deliberate and malicious editing |
gets my vote.
They do it a lot all over the media. Good reason so many Americans have been misled into the views now reflected in the polls.
The media is hammering on us from all sides.
Yahoo has a terrible liberal bias.
Dusty
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Left and Wrong are the opposite of Right! |
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Anker-Klanker
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Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 1033
Location: Richardson, TX
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| Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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No doubt about it, it's deliberate.
Just to satisfy my curiosity... I hypothesized that Google probably uses an automated search and parsing algorithm to find the "hit" on a key word, and to provide surrounding contextual information. But, then, I thought, if they do this how would they design the algorithm to pick out the relevant contextual information if his name - the "hit" term - occurred in the beginning of a sentence or phrase, at the end, or the middle? So I ran a little test...
Simply put "Jack Murtha" in a Google search, and notice the pattern of where his name appears in relation to the contextual text. I see no discernable pattern at all, so have to conclude that it's not likely to be automated, and certainly not to the extent that the above contextual information appears. |
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GoophyDog
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Joined: 10 Jun 2004
Posts: 480
Location: Washington - The Evergreen State
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| Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 1:11 am Post subject: |
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The parsing is based on occurance, placement and punctuation.
First search is probably based on hit indexing and on match and soundex.
Second search grabs blocks of text containing the search string weighted by exact match, soundex and partials. Not knowing what the data grab is on their spiders the actual size of the block of text is purely conjecture or WAG - 2048 bytes or so. (News articles will usually be the first couple of paragraphs, call it 1024 bytes).
First trim is the first preceeding period of the search text. If there are quotes, weight is given for second sentence follow-on.
Second trim is doubled up matches with either the search string appearing twice in the same sentence or immediately following in the next.
This does not discount any META imbeds that may be in the searched html coding which will also add weight to the results.
Personally, I prefer to trim my searches by using some standard boolean logic in the search line.
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Why ask? Because it needs asking. |
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MrJapan
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Joined: 27 Sep 2004
Posts: 465
Location: Chiba, Japan
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| Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 4:26 pm Post subject: |
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I concur that Google is editing the results...
| Quote: | Posted by JimK on 05/05 at 02:28 AM (Link to this comment)
Google removed my entire personal blog recently. It’s been happening to a LOT of people...Moorewatch is impossible to find.
Google is basically killing off blogs in search results. I’m now wondering every day if I’m getting everything I need when I do a search.
Google is primed for a young upstart company to take them down in the search arena. |
EXAMPLE of GOOGLE
You will have to read the entire post to see what has happened... If you are offended by vulgar language, don't read it.. it can get pretty hectic there; unlike liberal sites, the owner of the site doesn't delete (very often anyway) people with a different view.
Of course, the subject is Moorewatch.com and Google.
This all falls in line with Google (lib search engine) editing what they want you to see....
It also follows the style that wikipedia runs :/ |
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GoophyDog
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Location: Washington - The Evergreen State
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| Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 4:49 pm Post subject: |
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The reason moorewatch is being dropped is simply the non domain name resolution in the link. When you do a Google on moorewatch, the top result will be a link but without a domain name, just the IP address. When you DIG the host, moorewatch.com incorrectly uses a CNAME to resolve the www component.
Why they (moorewatch.com) have chosen that method is anyone's guess but by doing so they are bound to get some strange results on a search.
So, in this case its not a Google fault but rather some web/system manager who is shooting him/herself in the foot.
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Anker-Klanker
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Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 1033
Location: Richardson, TX
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| Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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GoophyDog: Since you obviously know something about these algorithms, does it seem to you possible or likely that Google would have excerpted the red part from the following quote:
| Quote: | | Officials in the Pentagon and at U.S. Central Command declined to say whether Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., was correct in saying Marines killed innocent women and children “in cold blood” during the attacks last November. |
I.e., in your opinion is this just a quirky, and innocent, result of an automated parsing algorithm? Or was human intervention involved?
Thanks for your opinion (and I know that's all it will be, since you can't possibly really know). |
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GoophyDog
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Posts: 480
Location: Washington - The Evergreen State
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| Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 6:03 am Post subject: |
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Therein lies the crux of the matter.
Recall when I said it looks like they parse from the first preceeding period? So, parsing that sentence, the first preceeding period is the one following "Rep" so everything before that would naturally get chopped in a short result listing.
| Anker-Klanker wrote: | GoophyDog: Since you obviously know something about these algorithms, does it seem to you possible or likely that Google would have excerpted the red part from the following quote:
| Quote: | | Officials in the Pentagon and at U.S. Central Command declined to say whether Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., was correct in saying Marines killed innocent women and children “in cold blood” during the attacks last November. |
I.e., in your opinion is this just a quirky, and innocent, result of an automated parsing algorithm? Or was human intervention involved?
Thanks for your opinion (and I know that's all it will be, since you can't possibly really know). |
Final thought and just an opinion: Consider the article author and the editors. By now they are bound to have an idea of how these search engines catagorize and display results. So with a little sly wordsmithing they can insert bias in a search result without actually being pegged as biased. In the line in question if Representative had not been abbreviated a whole different slant would have been given to the results.
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Deuce
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 19 Mar 2005
Posts: 589
Location: FL
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| Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 6:25 pm Post subject: |
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All that said, I agree completely (and then some) w/ MrJapan that Google has become THE extreme left search engine of choice....so when I want something 'unbiased', I look to Yahoo.
Fortunately, BIAS can become self correcting when enough people know about it....a la Ditzy Chicks. They learned, and apparently keep learning how Americans vote with their wallet! Let's hope Google doesn't try to 'alienate' their customers the same way!!!!
Deuce
(I'm still looking for a 'right' biased search engine) |
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