marmalade

Check out the December 25(2007) entry titled 'Google Suppressing Truth Be Known':

http://tbknews.blogspot.com/

I've had this problem with Google before. I'd do a specific search for something and it wouldn't come up in the first few pages of results. Just a couple of weeks ago I had this problem with the site that this blog is about and so I had confirmation that I wasn't the only one having this problem.

In this case, when I had done a search with the query of 'truthbeknown.com Acharya'(the name of the site and the name of the person running the site), a bunch of sites came up before hers. Some of these were linking to her site, but even several Christian critics of her ideas came up before her site itself which they were directly criticizing.

I've wondered the reasons for why certain sites show up as top results and why others don't. In the comments, there are several possible explanations put forth. What do you think?

Agnostic Elder

Truth be known. Informational, but purely opinionated. No more "truth" than the Christians you rail against. In fact, most of the articles were questions. Hardly truth.

The only truthful article I saw was "STEVE IRWIN WAS KILLED". That was the truth. The rest was editorial.

marmalade

Well, I can certainly say that you're quite opinionated... and your opinion is rather off-topic. Do you have an on-topic opinion?

Or if you have something to say about Acharya's theories, do you have an informed opinion? I'm fairly sure the author is more informed than you. She is familiar with several of the languages that ancient texts are written in and a mainstream scholar such as RM Price has written the introduction to her newest book.

If you disagree, then give reasons for doing so: quotes, sources, links, or something. And, no, I'm not going to spoon-feed her whole theory to you. If you're interested in her theory, then read about it. She has written several highly footnoted and very thick books. Without reading her books, you really have no idea even what the details of her theory are. If you don't wish to inform yourself, then your uninformed opinion is of no concern to me. If you have such little curiosity about learning more, then why are you wasting your time? Are you just bored? In a bad mood?

All that I linked to was her blog. She has a site with some decent summaries of her theories and some excerpts from her books. Also, she has a forum where you can get any of your questions answered or your limited knowledge increased.

I've too often heard people give responses like yours about Acharya, and it gets tiresome after a while. I don't rail against Christianity. I rail against people who are closed-minded(read: critical, ignorant, dogmatic, etc.). I've observed some atheists/agnostics who are as close-minded as any fundie. I don't know if you're this way or not, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

AB517

Hey, marm.

I really should not respond to this because I do not know.
I think it has to do with the number of hits to a site or links to that site.

Google and others engines have a method to list the sites.

Again I do not remember how they do it.
Maybe google that ...

marmalade

The lady that runs the site says she used to come up as top results within certain topics. And, as far as I can tell, she has become more well-known in recent years.

One theory someone put out was about the complaint button at the bottom of the Google page. I don't know if they use the complaints to help rank sites. But if they do, then negative complaints about searches where this site comes up would decrease her rank. This would take many complaints to accomplish this, but as you can see from the first response to this thread that her ideas have a way of inspiring complaining.

Because she is one of the biggest critics against literal interpretations of religion, she is a favorite target amongst both Christians and Hindus. She often compares the two religions and neither one wants to be compared to the other. This might explain why her critics come up above her in the search results. You'd think that proves how popular she is. I think I've even seen whole sites dedicated to criticizing her alone.

The other thing is that she says that she still comes up in the top results of other search engines such as Yahoo. I don't normally use Yahoo and I haven't tested this out yet. So, why would her rankings go down on Google all the while remaining on the top on Yahoo?

I wouldn't be all that interested in this topic except I've come across this before. More importantly, I made the same observation she did in her blog before she wrote her blog. When it first happened, I thought maybe it was just some weird fluke.

Sometimes the ranking system is useful. But its very frustrating when you can't quickly find what you're looking for even when you know very specific info about it. Its not as if she is some obscure scholar. Go to any religious or atheist/agnostic forum and your likely to find her name in a search.

Several people have already complained about her low ranking to Google, and so Google might already changed it for all I know.

AB517

Its good to learn other stuff Marm, breaks the thoughts up. know what I mean?

WilliamBlue

I think that they list sites by which ones get the most hits for a particular search, in other words those sites that are critical of her site are getting more hits, not sure where I heard this and don't take it as written in stone, but I think it's mostly correct.

__________________
When you dance with an elephant it's up to you to not get stepped on.
How can we be so arrogant and egotistical to believe that the whole Universe was created just for us?

marmalade

I do think about other things, but you only see one side of me. On this agnostic forum I talk about agnostic things which usually means religious related. On integral forums, I talk about integral topics. On jungian forums, I talk about Jungian topics. On type forums, I talk about type topics.

You really only see one side of me because this isn't my main forum. I originally only came here for one reason and that was to talk about religion, but I'm willing to talk about other things if you wish. My home forum is globalchatter.com. Its a type forum, but because I know the people there well I talk about all kinds of things. Actually, I often don't even talk about type there.

I'm sorry you only see my serious side. I can be quite silly at globalchatter. Feel free to visit me there if you want to see a different side to me. Its the only forum that your likely to see me in a truly relaxed state of mind. I'm an INFP and most people there are INFPs(as its an INFP forum), and so its easier to relax with a bunch of people similar to me. Forums like this probably attract many NT types and that puts me in an intellectual headspace.

marmalade

I've thought that was probably the reason. However, she claimed that other search engines still bring her up as top ranking. There are several possible explanations:

- She is incorrect about her claims of top ranking in other search engines.
- Christian fundies critical of her work prefer using Google.
- Google uses a method for ranking that is different from other search engines.

marmalade

A slight edit of my previous post. I did the same search using Yahoo. Her site came up as the first result and there didn't seem even a single critic of hers on the first page of results.

So, her claim seems to be correct. This leaves the two other explanations.