ONE MAN'S TRUTH, ANOTHER MAN'S TRASH

Google wants to rank websites based on facts not links - 28 February 2015 - New Scientist »

Being trustworthy and accurate could help a web page rise up Google rankings if the search engine giant starts to measure quality by facts, not just links

Lots of people are quite worked up over this.. As a matter of fact, the grand implication here is that GOOGLE is simply the Orweillian ‘Ministry of Truth” ..

Right now, Google uses a complex algorithm of determining the number of links going TO a site as the way to measure how far up in the search a certain website will be.  Of course, people would argue that sites containing lots of misinformation will be too high in results and bad information will be spread.. you know, like the bad information that typically disseminates from MAINSTREAM news outlets during breaking news events..

But now the ‘ministry of truth’ idea comes into play, where Google will tap into a fact vault to compare with search terms. Of course, one man’s facts is another man’s figuring.. facts change. Historical accounts converge to paint very different pictures from those presented in the G-rated history books we have become grown to reading in our formative years..

The ‘fact optimization’ idea will most likely create a brand new multi-billion dollar industry.. I can see it now, people who specialize in advertising ‘facts’ ..

But a long time ago, if Google would have been around, a ‘fact’ would have been a flat earth theory..

And if someone googles “Best sex of 2015” … will there be a fact algorithm to present it? Because let’s not kid ourselves on what people Google—anyone with a website can tell you some of the bizarre terms that land them on their pages..

So for all of those upset by this, I get it. I am uncomfortable, too.

But there’s always STARTPAGE. And for those more old fashioned folk, you can always still ask Jeeves, even though he has been vanquished from the askeeves search page.