How the Trump-Russia Data Machine Games Google to Fool Americans
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/06/how-the-trump-russia-data-machine-games-google-to.htmlA year ago I was part of a digital marketing team at a tech company. We were maybe the fifth largest company in our particular industry, which was drones. But we knew how to game Google, and our site was maxed out. We did our research and geared the content for the major keywords that we knew people used most frequently when they were shopping for drones or researching drones or looking for drone video. We knew our audience: their buying habits, their interests, ages, geography, etc., and soon our Google results were up there with a company that was literally an order of magnitude bigger than we were. A few months later, we were beating them at Google.
Our sales reflected this nearly immediately, but perhaps more importantly, we were perceived as being much bigger and more influential than we actually were. It was unfair and fair at the same time. It’s just how that game is played, everywhere.
But then the giants wised up, poured a ton of people and money into it and squashed us.
Thing is, it doesn’t take all that much to do what we did. Ask any digital marketer. You just need a little experience and a whole lot of time and money. I’m not going to get into the weeds of SEO (search engine optimization). But I am going to say something that sounds completely insane, and warn you that we’re in the middle of something we’ve never experienced in America: a full-on psychological war. And Google, of all places, is a main battlefield....more
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This very interesting (and alarming!) article says that Google ranks fake news articles equally with the legitimate news sources such as NY Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek etc. etc.
So an inexperienced person - such as a typical Trump supporter - who uses Google to research any topic wold be overwhelmed with the fake news version before they get to the legitimate news articles on page 3 or 4. Most "typical" readers never get to page 3 or 4 they'll just read the fake news article that Google gives them on top of the search.
We have to get Google to stop doing this! The fake news machines are mostly churning out garbage that have no truth content but inexperienced readers can't understand that. The Russians have completely taken over this propaganda war and they're running it on behalf of the right-wing conservatives. There are no liberal/progressive voices in this machine and in fact the liberals have already lost this war.
Just like we gave up on talk radio 20 years ago, we're conceding the Google wars to the conservatives/Russians. This can't be allowed to continue and we must fight fire with fire.
