I find the Santorum "Google Problem" disquieting, to say the least.<p>I think his politics are repugnant, but less than 1% of Google search queries for his name are looking for Dan Savage's prank. Google knows this. Google obsessively tweaks all manner of other links in the index. But Google's overall politics happen to be the same as my politics, so Santorum gets unequal access to the 2012 Internet.<p>Savage's prank actually discredits the Internet. Surely nobody's mind is going to be changed by that disgusting link. Instead, it just serves to associate Internet content with the culture wars. I don't think I'll upset too many HN'ers when I assert that the people most likely to be offended by that link are the people we'd most like finding better ways of informing themselves than talk radio.<p>Finally, and most obviously, we all happen to share the same sense of humor and political stance as <i>today's</i> Internet gatekeeper. But we are by no means assured of compatibility with the next one.<p>That "Santorum" link is perhaps the most notorious attempt ever to game Google's search rankings. Google should penalize the shit out of it.
Until very recently Rick Santorum was pretty much a nobody. His name was more likely to come up in a blog post about gay rights than on the front page of the NY Times.<p>Today, people are searching because he's literally front page news. This would seem to be an example of Google not keeping up with real-time events.<p>OTOH, in a few months or even weeks he'll probably be out of the race, so reversion to the mean seems likely.
It seems the only search engine not reflecting the boorish behavior of some random sex columnist is DuckDuckGo:<p><a href="http://duckduckgo.com/?q=santorum" rel="nofollow">http://duckduckgo.com/?q=santorum</a><p>Hard to tell if it's an intentional, exceptional tweak - it could be, but it could also be a general rule along the lines of 'if there's a lot of news and it's a person in Wikipedia, lead with Wikipedia and then show the news.'<p>Either way, it's smart.
In one way I feel bad for the little guy as it's a horrible smear campaign against his name however when I look at some of his extreme policies I'm suddenly less sympathetic. He implies a lot of nasty things about a lot of different groups of people. I can't see any good reason others shouldn't do the same against him.
First, please, don't get me wrong because I am absolutely against his anti-gay policies myself.<p>From what I've read, the site which has given Santorum a meaning have made the demand that he stops talking negatively about homosexuals. If he does, the site will go away. This makes me think, even though I somehow think he deserves it: Isn't this essentially against free speech? Forcing someone to censor their opinions through non-violent troublemaking?<p>I probably didn't manage to phrase that well-enough to please anyone, but at least I've voiced my concerns.
Search engines need to keep a close eye on concerted efforts to manipulate results based on childish, political horseshit. Google is either failing technologically (unlikely), or is intentionally maligning a credible political candidate (very likely).<p>No, I don't support Rick. He's worthless..