Whither The "ClimateGate" Results?
By Carl Bussjaeger, December 13, 2009

If you are a regular at my site, you probably already know about "Climategate", whatever your particular take on it. But if you get where you are going on the 'Net by using Google, you might not.

I call it GoogleGate.

For so-called "climate change" news, I tend to use Watts Up With That as a portal. It is comprehensive, and has excellent contributors and blog commenters. At least one Nobel Physics Prize (you know, one that still means something, unlike the "peace prize" which has been a joke for decades) winner is a regular commenter; which was amusing the day a troll dropped by to explain that we're all ignorant, uneducated, trailer park trash who need to get back to our Wal-Mart jobs. Dr. Smith's response was delightful.

But I digress.

Many commenters have taken up the hobby of "Google watching"; specifically, seeing how many results a search on "climategate" will draw, and if the automated suggestions will come up with "climategate" as you type (at first it did, then it stopped, now it randomly appears infrequently). This started out as a simple test of how much attention ClimateGate was getting as opposed to "global warming". But the disappearing search suggestion puzzled folks.

Then we realized Al Gore is a "senior adviser" to Google. Now, even as the issue escalates, with pro-AGW researchers stepping down and being investigated, something is up with Google. Or, rather, down.

Yesterday, Google results for "climategate" peaked at approximately 30 million.

Today, at about 12:45PM ET "climategate" results were down to 23.4 million. More than 6 million results evaporated over night. I sent the following to Google:

So Google searches on "climategate" peaked over 30 million results.
Just a few minutes ago I got the following results:
Altavista 72.7 million
Bing      50.3 million
Google    23.4 million

As the issue continues, Google keeps losing results, while everyone
else keeps finding more? You care to guess which search engine
bookmark got deleted? 

You're worse than useless. I hope Gore is compensating you well
for the loss of users.

More comparisons: Yahoo! gives 44.4 million results for "climategate". Ixquick gives "at least 65,699,606" results. Heck, even Answers.com has a detailed article with 85 footnotes.

See below for daily updates on the Google count.

Several WUWT commenters reported contacting Google regarding the search suggestions, with the response that it is based on a proprietary algorithm which gets manually tweaked. One commenter specifically asked if Gore, as a "senior adviser" (who has claimed to have advised Google on "search quality", had any input regarding Google Suggest; the response ignored the question.

Right now, I do not know if there is a political or financial agenda affecting Google's results. There could well be, but it does not matter. Any search engine that operates so poorly that it loses 6.6 million results over night, that can find just one half or one third results compared to the competition, is not a search engine I will use.

In fact, except for "Google watching" I stopped using Google searches some time ago; philosphical reasons involving privacy and Google's attempt to control the universe. The old stand-by Altavista gives plenty of results. Bing seems to work well. If you need anonymity while browsing, try Ixquick; but it can be a little slow, especially with HTTPS enabled.

Just stay away from Google.

Daily Updates:
12/14/09, 8:44AM ET: Google results for "climategate" are now down to 21.2 million. Google has lost almost 9 million results.

Altavista, on the other hand, is up to 76.3 million; a gain of 3.6 million, even as Google loses.

12/15/09, 9:00AM: Google is down to 19.9 million; they have now lost over 10 million results, more than a third.
Altavista is up to 77.4 million results.

12/16/09, 9:54AM: Google lost another 1.3 million results; now down to 18.6 million. Altavista results still rising: 77.7 million.

You've got to love Google's search Al-Gore-rithm.

12/17/09, 8:47AM: Google down to 13.1 million, a loss of five and a half million results overnight. This is significantly less than half of the peak 30 million results Google was reporting just 5 days ago. Gore must be so proud.

Too be fair, Altavista dropped to 77.5 million. But somehow a loss of 0.3% seems less significant than a loss of 56%.

Hey, I haven't checked Bing lately. Let's see: Up to 57.3 million. Google alone seems to have this amnesia problem.

12/18/09, 8:11AM:

Google	12.7 million, down 400K; starting to level.
Altavista	76.0 million, down 1.5 million, still proportionately less than Google.
Bing	57.4 million, up 100k.

The mass results loss at Google may have ended, finally. What we're starting to see looks a lot more like normal daily variations. But "normal" is after Google disappeared 57% of its earlier max count. Altavista and Bing changes are pretty much lost in the noise at -2.18% and +0.2% respectively.

Whatever the cause of the Google results, it has lost all credibility so far as I am concerned.

I'll check in tomorrow, just to be sure we're done with gross changes.

12/19/09, 8:24AM:

Google	12.5 million.
Altavista	73.4 million.
Bing	57.5 million, up 100k.

The result variations are starting to look pretty normal now. Aside from the fact that Google is apparently blind to 60,000,000 results now.

Ah, Google: The search engine preference of communist dictatorships and climate change scam artists.