Google full of shit - Empty of Katrina Images

[MrScorpio]

First, check out YAHOO

http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=hurricane+katrina+new+orleans&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-img-t&fl=0&x=wrt

These are what you would expect when you query "Hurricane katrina new orleans"

Now the same with Google:

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&safe=off&c2coff=1&client=safari&rls=en&q=hurricane+katrina+new+orleans&btnG=Search

What the FUCK?

[BlueIris]

1. I was going to start a topic on this; I've been suspecting for a while

that something is SERIOUSLY wrong with Google. My problem is--the obvious censorship going on there (can't speculate from what source) has prevented me from relocating a lot of articles I found last fall, but stupidly didn't download or bookmark. Stuff that isn't political in nature, (cats, obscure word origins, and discussions of certain kinds of infertility in women) which probably just got swept off the map after whatever happened to Google took place. It's effed up, man.

[In_The_Wind]

2. looking bad on all fronts now ...

nada ...

[MrScorpio]

3. Addendum: Incompetent Bush

46,500 hits on Yahoo

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=hurricane+katrina+new+orleans+incompetent+bush&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&fr=FP-tab-img-t

But only 6,650 on Google

http://www.google.com/search?q=hurricane+katrina+new+orleans+incompetent+bush&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&c2coff=1&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&start=10&sa=N

Again, WTF?!?

[In_The_Wind]

4. indeed!

google has :nopity:

[NMMNG]

5. Here you go

You have to search for just Hurricane Katrina

[Heidi]

6. Shouldn't a catastrophe like this return more than 36 images?

Just asking. :shrug:

[MrScorpio]

7. 36 images of nifty storm tracks at that

You know, I was planning to do a Song in Pictures of When The Levee Breaks but decided against it when I googled nothing decent

The Fuckers

[Heidi]

9. Dogpile returns 42.

http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/search/images/hurricane%2Bkatrina%2B%2522new%2Borleans%2522/1/-/1/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/408/top

And today's Times-Picayune has a big PDF of aftermath images: http://www.nola.com/hurricane/katrina/pdf/090305/a16.pdf

Still, something very, very strange is going on here. I'll ask Mr. Heidi to search in German, too. We've long believed that Europe gets more of the "real news" than does the US.

[NMMNG]

8. You would think so

I mean, Britney Spears got 196,000. I guess she's much more important. :sarcasm:

[billyskank]

10. I wouldn't go blaming Google just yet

I don't know what's going on, but I find it utterly incredible that Google would be censoring its search results in this way. For one thing, it'd be a suicidal move: if people get wind that they are manipulating their search results in that way, they'd flock to another search engine just as quickly as we flocked to Google in the first place.

I notice that Yahoo now is not returning any image hits either. I am very curious as to why.

[BlueIris]

11. For some of us, this has been a problem for longer than today.

And just because it is illogical doesn't mean Google isn't doing it--what about pandering to the right IS logical anyway? People and info brokers have been doing it for many years now.

I can understand your incredulity, and maybe there is another explanation--malfunction? Outside interference (though even my scant knowledge of the kind of outfit Google is makes that laughable to me--it couldn't have been "hacked," could it?)? Here's an idea, though, if you can't believe it--go Google some stuff you know should come up even on a sketchy keyword search. Articles you have been able to retrieve through that method in the past. Do they come up? Try that again with politically oriented material, and see if you can get what you're looking for.

I'm not saying you don't have a right to your skepticism, but I don't think those of us noticing the problems are imagining them, either.

[billyskank]

12. Any computer system can be cracked

but I think this is quite unlikely here. In any case, I see no reason why Google should bow before the Republicans, because Google serves the whole world. For instance, my browser's home page is www.google.co.uk, which is exactly the same as www.google.com except that I have the option of limiting searches to UK sites only if I want (which is often useful to me). You will find that there is a Google page specific to every single country. With this in mind, I find the idea of Google limiting its search according to political expediences quite incredible, because political correctness varies from country to country, and it is as easy as pie to access another country's Google service.

One possible explanation is that news sites are limiting the google search bots. There is a convention that webmasters specify what things on their site web crawlers should and should not access by means of a file called robots.txt they place in their home directory, which informs web crawlers what they should and should not be viewing. (You can see DU's robots.txt at http://www.democraticunderground.com/robots.txt). Spammers' bots routinely ignore this of course, but reputable organisations like Google certainly abide by the wishes of webmasters. It could be that many news sites are preventing search engines from indexing their images...?

[billyskank]

13. One more thing worth noting

Google's political contributions heavily favour the Democratic party. In the last three election cycles, Google gave $463,500 to Democrats, and just $5,000 to Republicans.

Source:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44125
which I found by a Google search. :)

It doesn't prove anything, but it also doesn't sound like a company running scared of the GOP.