[conspire] The disappearing scandal: Google Search

[Akkana Peck]

Rick Moen writes:
>    Here’s how it works. Say you search for
>    “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a
>    search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes

That made me skeptical of the claim. It sounds like a completely dumb and transparent way to slant search results. I mean, come on, someone searching for "children's clothing" would notice right away if the top two pages of results were all from the same manufacturer. There are plenty of ways Google could alter their backend more subtly, like adjusting probabilities so that results are shown more often, in proportion to how much the company is paying Google. And I assume they're doing something like that; but it's hard to believe they're altering search queries in the obvious, impoossible-to-miss way Ms. Gray's story claimed.

BCLUG writes:
> How *do* geo-location by IP work to have such incredible accuracy, anyway?

It sure doesn't here. I live in northern New Mexico now, using DSL, and I've seen geolocation (particularly Google's) put me anywhere from where I live, to Albuquerque (about 90 miles away), to 400 miles away at the other end of the state, to (much less commonly) Minnesota or even Germany.

I've always assumed that IP geolocation worked by knowing the IP ranges ISPs use for specific geographic regions. But that doesn't explain why they could ever geolocate me outside the US; I don't think CenturyLink provides DSL service in Europe.

Or maybe they do: a qwant search (thanks for the recommendation, I'm trying them) on centurylink dsl europe gives as a first result a Lumen (which owns CL) support page that includes Europe, Middle East and Africa.

The rest of the qwant results seem to be pages that don't include the word "Europe" anywhere, my biggest pet peeve with all the search engines now: if I search for a word, why are you showing me mostly pages that don't include that word? If there was a search engine company that only showed me pages that included all my search terms, they'd have my business for sure.

        ...Akkana