I’ve been doing searches for a couple months on “mann steyn simberg trial,” but very little new shows up over time, and it mostly links to articles supportive of Mann. As a result, I had no idea that Just The News had been (like almost no other media outlet) doing good reporting on it since the trial began. Does anyone else want to try?
10 thoughts on “Search-Engine Mystery”
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Post cache clear, in order:
About 7,540 results (0.27 seconds)
CBC
DeSmog
Reason Magazine
Climate Change Litigation Databases
eos.org
Courthouse News Service
Axios
NPR
Free Speech Center
That was giggle.
DDG:
http://www.cbc.ca
portside.org
http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com
reason.com
http://www.npr.org
eos.org
http://www.nytimes.com
apnews.com
http://www.scientificamerican.com
Bink:
http://www.cbc.ca
http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com
http://www.npr.org
apnews.com
eos.org
http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.usnews.com
http://www.scientificamerican.com
http://www.theguardian.com
I use DuckDuckGo and while the top hits are the usual suspects applauding the verdict, in the top thirty or so are Steyn’s own website (several times), judithcurry.com, americanThinker.com, reason.com, and manhattanContrarian.com.
The point is that none of them were justthenews.com, which has been covering it more diligently than most, but I just accidentally found that out today when I was at the site for something else.
Did it again, and in the first 10 pages of results, there are three from “justthenews.com”, with the highest at 33.
Somehow, they weigh these news sources and I think the lefty ones are automatically given precedence. The NYT could write you ate a ham sandwich from the bench and nothing more or less and it would still likely be the top hit.
I use DuckeDuckGo and automatically throw out the top-ten hits on anything controversial anymore.
Google is devolving as a functional search engine, it was better ten years ago.
Using DDG (which should be almost the same as Bing since it uses their engine), I get Media Bias/Fact Check right ahead of Just The News. So in the search results a detractor is ahead of them (MB/FC labels JTN a “questionable source” with some cause).
The popularity of the myth of Big Oil propaganda is bizarre. One wouldn’t see such a one-sided portrayal of the trial towards Mann, if that were really the case.
“As little as possible?”
“What did you say?”
“As little as possible.”
“Get him out of here! I’m doing you a favor.”
“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of this happens on an individual level rather than everyone experiencing the same thing.