What the HELL is this doing in a Google News search?

[chalky]

I was Googling Howard Dean in news, and this piece of crap pops up:

Confidential Democrat Memo Shows Dean Was Deliberately Set Up

"WASHINGTON, DC --- An official Democratic memo released anonymously to the media today showed that the recent Howard Dean crazy attacks on the GOP were purposely staged. The outbursts allowed other Democrats to attack him as being too radical and to show some kind of victory for a Democrat over an opponent. Any opponent."

<snip>

"Democrats were embarrassed by the leak. 'I think Ted Kennedy might have accidentally forwarded this memo to Senator Leahy in a drunken stupor,' said a Democrat insider. 'This doesn't look good for us. I really think the ruse was working before the memo was leaked.'"

http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=15112

Below this it CLEARLY STATES that the author is a satirist.
This is SATIRE. Meanspirited, bullshit republican satire, but still, SATIRE. Why the hell is Google putting this in NEWS?????

[Ravenseye]

1. It's a computer

A program determines what goes in Google News. A pretty ingenious one really, but it's not flawless.

[Tux]

2. And

The keywords were Howard Dean. Since those words appear in the article, it will be in the search results. Basic search engine 101.

[chalky]

3. Basic Search Engine?

A "Howard Dean" search on Google web certainly brings up different hits than a "Howard Dean" news search. What the hell kind of filter are they using to make this constitute "news"?

[Ravenseye]

5. They have a registry of 'news' sites

their news server constantly hits these news sites looking for new posted stories. The posted stories then are processed and searched for key words which go into their search engine algorithm.

Then when you search for "Howard Dean" every article that has that keyword phrasing is brought up, and they have been parsed into discreet story units by the program. Then it selects the one which the program feels has the highest relevance and puts that up top and sorts downwards.

[chalky]

9. So this site, ChronWatch, that openly admits to an anti-liberal bias

and states on its "about us" page that the San Francisco Chronicle:
"....was once 'just liberal thinking,' has already become 'leftist', and is steadily moving toward 'Socialist' in its beliefs. "
is a registered news source.

Hmmmm.

[Ravenseye]

11. Yup

Just like liberal sites like "The Nation" and "Democratic Underground are.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=democratic+underground

That's right baby. The Top 10 Conservative Idiots is parsed by Google News too.

[NMMNG]

13. Chronwatch is a smaller version of Freak Republic

Albeit with a much higher grade of graphics.

[0rganism]

4. No mention of the DSM on the frontpage, tho

I guess that's not considered sufficiently newsworthy here in the country that lied itself into a war.

[Ravenseye]

7. It's on my front page

but it changes constantly depending on what news has been posted most recently. Good to use as search tool for news sites but not to rely on their algorithms front page choices so much.

[mcscajun]

6. Simple. The webmaster used metatags to establish his page as news.

Note the Keywords from the Chronwatch home page source code:

<meta name="keywords" content="conservative news, conservative, conservative media, media, GOP, commentary, right, christian, Chronicle, SFGate, Republican, moral majority, liberal media, George Bush, Reagan, religious, religion, church and state">

That's how it's done, folks. Google's bot just does what it's told; webmasters know and take advantage of it.

[Alizaryn]

8. Wow, good catch!

submit to Google as news...

President Bush decided to come clean with the American Public today. In a memo accidental forwarded to Senator Kennedy he communicated his guilt and complacency in fabricating the reasons for our need to go to war with Iraq. He went on to express that his occasional twinges of guild were "bothersome" and interrupted his sleep one night but that he "was stronger then any old moments of conscience".

The person responsible for the misdirection of the memo is not known, however, the general thought is that Vice President Cheney is off the wagon again.

"This is very, very bad" said Senator Frist. "BUT, EVERYONE SHOULD GET AN UP OR DOWN VOTE."

[chalky]

12. Hey, get NewsHounds to float that.

Purely as satire, of course. :evilgrin:

[NoSheep]

10. I heard something on NPR a month or so ago about how many

searches on Google pull up "negative" topics at the top of the search. Someone at Google was being asked about it and they admitted this was true but had no way to explain it. :shrug:
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050601glaser/ here is an article on a company trying to control those results. Maybe there are folks out there planting "bombs" so Google will react accordingly.