Google and the George W. Bush Fart Doll
Brad Hill in the Google Unofficial Weblog has brought to my attention a story that is circulating that Google exhibits a pro-Clinton (and, by inference, anti-Bush and pro-left-wing) bias.
The story is that Google's AdWords unit declined to run contextual ads for a book bashing Clinton published by World Ahead Publishing. The information comes from a press release put out by World Ahead, a "premier publisher of conservative and Libertarian books" based in Los Angeles.
Now, I've found that AdWords does accept or reject ads in a capricious and silly fashion (this is presumably a function of inadequate software, not political bias), and that there is no effective appeal from an AdWords rejection. That said, some of the claims in the World Ahead "Google Censors Ads for Anti-Clinton Book" press release appear to be false, to wit:
- Google has accepted ads for a George W. Bush Fart Doll. This does not appear to be the case. A Google search for George W. Bush Fart Doll yields Google results pages with plenty of Bush dolls in the AdWords ads, but no flatulence (at least in the ads).
- Claims of "political bias" and "liberal leanings" in ad acceptance policies also are false, in my experience. I've previosuly noted the creationist Google ads that consistently show up on my blog items blasting intelligent design. And my wife's site about successfully managing high-risk pregnancies was getting ads for anti-abortionists until we took steps to ban these organizations (by listing their URLs with Google) from the site. To me, these ads seem to show a conservative bias - and a true contextual analysis would not have placed them on our sites. (Note to readers of whatever political persuasion: if you see a Google ad for an organization, cause or politician you truly hate, by all means click the link. Each time an AdWords link is clicked, it costs the advertiser!)
Admittedly, there are some anomolies. For example, the first search return link in Google for the miserable failure is famously the official White House biography of George W. Bush. (If you enter "miserable failure" in the Google search box and click the I'm Feeling Lucky button, this is the page that will open.)
Personally, I don't disagree with the equation of President Bush with miserable failure (to wear my politics on my sleeve). However, the result appears to have to do with Google bombing rather than intentional bias on the part of Google. As such, it speaks to the automated contextual analysis and relevance ordering algorithms Google uses hitting a wall - particularly when confronted by perpetual efforts to game the system - rather than intentional bias.
Releted entries: Publish the PageRank Algorithm, Humans Tweak Google Rankings
Posted by Harold Davis at June 15, 2005 10:34 AM
