Gatekeeper Google Censors Small venders' Content Featuring Satirical Criticism of Obama Complicity

[flakban]

Weeks ago, I decided to assist a friend of mine by helping disseminate word of her small line of political statement products. I posted the URL for her small t-shirt and gift site at the bottom of some of my posts here at DU (only in relevant threads to which I would have posted anyway). I wanted to help her mainly because a number of the logos and comments appearing on the offered products were representative of my personal concerns and disappointments relating to President Obama's decision to protect former Bush officials from Justice Department investigations into war crimes.

After I'd included the URL in a few posts here, I was advised by a DU moderator to stop doing so because the moderators considered it "disruptive." I complied with the instruction and have not posted the URL since.

The other day I had a conversation with the owner of the small t-shirt and gift site (my friend) and it turns out that she and a close friend of hers (who has similar items for sale on a different website -- some are almost the same) have been blacklisted from inclusion in the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). She told me her store's URL was initially indexed by Google and thus appeared in Google SERP results for about one week, but then mysteriously vanished.

I was initially incredulous that Google would blacklist certain content critical of President Obama, especially considering that the blacklisted criticisms, though satirical, are based upon irrefutable fact. And it's even more puzzling considering that Google continues to index and include SERP results for myriad other sites that are genuinely anti-Obama in nature and are replete with non-factually-based, mean-spirited content. Sites like that seem to be ever-present on the same t-shirt and gift marketing sites that host my friend's store, and her friend's store. These other sites I've checked return in the Google SERPs just fine.

I did some research for my friend over the last two days. My research included checking the source pages for both her site and her friend's site. I as well performed various search term tests at Google.com. The source pages for both sites have relevant meta keywords and descriptions in place. Interestingly, my friend's complaint appears valid in that there's a complete absence of results returned for either site when one of the site URLs is used as an exclusive search term. The conclusive test was to use site:marketingserviceURL/StoreID as an exclusive search term for each site. The response from Google.com was the same: "Your search - site:marketingserviceURL/StoreID - did not match any documents." A couple of SERPs for pages containing a few of the items from the blacklisted StoreIDs come up when using product-related keywords, but those results were only links to pages at the respective marketing sites that have internal category search results on them.

I understand that Google has the right to do whatever they so choose, which is what I've explained to my friend. I simply find it peculiar that they seem to be singling out this particular content as a point upon which to blacklist pages.

The site I initially tried to help promote was http://www.zazzle.com/realmscape and her friend's site is http://www.cafepress.com/zodium. I'm not going to post these URLs here again. I just thought perhaps someone may have some insight as to why Google may find these sites objectionable. My friend is not currently a DU member but she's been reading the forums here.

Thanks in advance for any comments.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. You're welcome.

[county worker]

2. I don't know why they would ban those URLs. I would not buy any of those items.

I have three feelings about the Obama criticism.

The main one is that most of what people are saying is true. So I am wondering why Obama does not come out and tell us why some of his actions contradict what he said in the run up to the election.

The next thing I think is that many people have views that are far more progressive than the mainstream. They are angry because even though Dems are in control of the government, there are few Dems attempting to move the country in a more progressive direction. I wonder why they blame Obama for what Congress or the courts or Justice is doing. Also I wonder why they can't see that they are far left of the main stream and that a drastic shift to the left is not going to happen.

I also feel that those on the far left are the force that will drive the country in a more progressive direction and if they don't keep up the pressure the rest of who sit on the sidelines will not move things very far left.

So I think the URLs should not be blocked and I wish the owners much success even though I will not be buying the items. The market for the items is not large I would think.

[flakban]

5. You have some good points...

Without getting into a discussion here about particulars concerning Obama's rights and wrongs, I'll just say this: In addition to his renege on various assurances, it's the lack of consequence for the gravely serious Bush-Cheney crimes and, especially, the risks which are placed upon us as far as the potential occurrence of future executive branch atrocities, that have me more than mildly concerned.

[truedelphi]

3. I'm not sure about censorship from Google about such a matter.

Your friend is probably in a Catch 22.
She will not get much in refernce to her site until she gets some serious hits, and she won't get serious hits until she builds up the number of people accessing her site.

At one point in time, I was worried about stuff I was writing and called Google on a day when Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, must have not had anything else to do. We had a lengthy conversation and after talking to him, it appears that the main thing that is involved with getting Google search to advance a site to the head of the pile is to get some hits. (assuming that you have a visible site, and that you have appropriate keywords and meta tags.)

I don't see anything that is earth shattering in what your friend is posting. I doubt that Google people are out to prevent people from noting your friend's site. Believe me, they have their hands full on censoring material that most of us would want to see censored - such as "Kill all Women who have had abortions," and/or "Assassinate the ____."

But it takes some notice from the internet users for Google search to become aware of any given site.

[flakban]

4. thanks for the opinion...

I agree with most of what you've explained. I'm the webmaster of a few of my own websites and when my sites were new I was able observe the googlebot crawler activity in my web logs and correlate those visits to when the google indexing of my sites had actually taken place. Although my new sites wouldn't appear in the first few SERP pages, I could always see if they had at least been indexed by google, simply by typing site:http://www.yoursite.com in the Google.com search field. And the result was that each of my sites were indexed and returning SERPs in a mere couple of days.

Adding this to my friend's statement that her site had been returning in query results just a few days after it had been created, and then noticing that those results completely vanished soon thereafer, just tells me something else happened.

So it's the comparison to my experience with new websites and the vanishing SERPs of my friend's site (and her friend's site) that has us puzzled.

[truedelphi]

6. But what would be happening?

One thing that confuses me is that I see all these Freeper sites out there, and they are very hard core against Obama.

So how is it that they show up readily on Google but your friend's site doesn't? That is the question that I cannot find any answers for.

[flakban]

7. I wish I knew...

The evidence suggests that Google blacklisted these pages. The reason is unclear and Google is far from transparent about such things. It makes no obvious sense to me. Something that is fairly clear, however, is that Google happens to be one private corporation who possesses unparalleled control of what content gets web exposure, and what content does not. At whim they can make or break one's potential to succeed in Internet commerce or even philanthropy. Now that's a gatekeeper with an enormous amount of power. In fact, I don't think it would be much of a mischaracterization to refer to the www as "Google's Web."