[zackees]

The real reason why search is so bad is that Google is downranking the internet.

I should know - I blew the whistle on the whole censorship regime and walked 950 pages to the DOJ and media outlets.

--> zachvorhies.com <--

What did I disclose? That Google was using a project called "Machine Learning Faireness" to rerank the entire internet.

Part of this beast has to do with a secret Page Rank score that Google's army of workers assign to many of the web pages on the internet.

If wikipedia contains cherry picked slander against a person, topic or website then the raters are instructed to provide a low page rank score. This isn't some conspiracy but something openly admitted by Google itself:

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...

See section 3.2 for the "Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness" score.

Despite the fact that I've had around 50 interviews and countless articles written about my disclosure, my website zachvorhies.com doesn't show up on Google's search index, even when using the exact url as a query! Yet bing and duckduckgo return my URL just fine.

Don't listen to the people who say that's its some emergent behavior from bad SEO. This deliberate sabotage of Google's own search engine in order to achieve the political agenda of the controllers. The stock holders of Google should band together in a class action lawsuit and sue the C-Level executives of negligence.

If you want your internet search to be better then stop using Google search. Other search engines don't have this problem: I'm looking at qwant, swisscows, duckduckgo, bing and others.

~Z~

[preommr]

Google's search rankings are based on opinions held by other credible sources. This isn't really blowing the whistle when, as you admitted, Google admits this openly.

And maybe your site doesn't get ranked well because it's directly tied to project veritas. I don't like being too political, especially on hn and on an account tied to my real identity, but project veritas and it's associates exhibit appalling behavior in duplicity and misdirection. I would hope that trash like this does get pushed to the bottom.

[leereeves]

In a political context, "credible" is often a synonym for "agrees with me". Anyone ranking "page quality" should be conscious of and try to avoid that, and yet the word "bias" doesn't even appear in the linked guidelines for Search Quality Raters.

Of course Google's own bias (and involvement in particular political campaigns) is well known, and opposed to Project Veritas, so it's quite possible that you are right and Google is downranking PV.

Would that be good? Well, that's an opinion that depends mostly on the bias of the commentator.

[JamesBarney]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas

I doubt this affected search rankings but Project Veritas does have a ton of credibility issues.

[qbaqbaqba]

And so does wikipedia.

[zackees]

Project Veritas does not have credibility issues. They have never issued a single retraction.

If this surprises you, then welcome to the systematic bias of wikipedia.

[wwweston]

> In a political context, "credible" is often a synonym for "agrees with me".

Not among credible sources.

[pjc50]

Meta-comment, but this is partly why search and the internet is so bad now; there are a large number of political disinformation campaigns which are getting increasingly blatant, and getting better at finding believers on the internet.

People have a vested interest in destroying the idea that anything can be a non-partisan "fact". Anything can become a smear. Only the most absolutely egregious ones can be reined in by legal action (e.g. Alex Jones libelling the Sandy Hook parents).

(This is not just internet, of course; the British press mendacity towards the Royal family is playing out at the moment.)

[skosch]

His website contains gems like "Things got political in June 2017 when Google deleted "covfefe" out of it's arabic translation dictionary in order to make a Trump tweet become nonsense." (No, covfefe doesn't mean anything in Arabic.)

Here is someone who believes that a private company's open attempts to rank websites by quality amounts to "seditious behaviour" deserving of criminal prosecution, and the only people willing to pay attention were Project Veritas. Google has plenty of ethics issues, but this guy's claims are absurd.

[zackees]

Not only is it a word, but Google had to delete the word twice.

https://www.zachvorhies.com/covfefe.html

[creato]

> Despite the fact that I've had around 50 interviews and countless articles written about my disclosure, my website zachvorhies.com doesn't show up on Google's search index, even when using the exact url as a query!

I just tried it, it's just showing results for "zach vorhies" instead, which it thinks you meant. I just tried a few other random "people's names as URL" websites I could find, sometimes it does this, sometimes it doesn't.

Furthermore, the results that do appear are hardly unsympathetic to you. If google is censoring you/your opinions, they're doing a very poor job of it.

[joshuamorton]

(I work at Google, but don't work on search)

> If wikipedia contains cherry picked slander against a person, topic or website then the raters are instructed to provide a low page rank score

This sounds like a good thing to me. Sites that contain lies, fabrications, and falsehoods should not be as highly ranked as those which do not.

Why should shareholders sure Google for, as far as I can tell from your argument, trying to provide users with a more useful product?

[viklove]

Why do your colleagues get to decide what is fact and what is fiction? It's our right, as humans, to be able to make that decision on our own after we encounter information. If Wikipedia gains a reputation for libel, then the onus should be on the public to stop trusting them.

Google does not have the moral authority to censor the internet, and it's absolutely wrong for them to attempt this. Information should be free, and you don't have the right to get in the way of that.

[samatman]

They don't get to decide any such thing, and in fact, can't. Google (fortunately for all of us) doesn't run the Internet.

They do run a popular search page, and have to decide what to do with a search like "Is the Earth flat?".

Personally, I would prefer they prominently display a "no". Others would disagree, but a search engine is curation by definition, that's what makes it useful.

[pen2l]

> Personally, I would prefer they prominently display a "no".

Oh hey! I just tried this, and it does! image: https://i.imgur.com/OqqxSq3.png

[Aeolun]

You would, and fortunately Google agrees with you, but imagine for a moment that they didn’t. 90% if the internet would suddenly see a ’yes’ to that answer, even if 99% of websites disagree.

[Nasrudith]

They get to decide because it is their algorithm and the whole point is of a search function is to discriminate inputs to be relevant. They aren't "getting in the way" - they are using it as they please.

What you ask for isn't freedom but control over everyone else - there is nothing stopping you from running your own spiders, search engines, and rankings.

[joshuamorton]

Who said anything about censorship? The topic of discussion is what order results are in. Are you saying Google would be more useful if it returned the 100 million results randomly and left you to sort them out?

[yibg]

They get to decide what they display as results. What do you suggest they do instead? Display all of the internet and let the user filter things for themselves?

[krageon]

> decide what is fact

The fun thing about facts is that nobody needs to decide whether or not they are true. Perhaps the fact that you can honestly claim to think otherwise means you need to take a step back and examine your reasoning.

[viklove]

> Perhaps the fact that you can honestly claim to think otherwise

This is an example of a "fact" that I'm talking about. It's not a fact, it's an opinion being presented as fact. I guess if you present yourself this way online you have no problem with Google controlling what "facts" are found when you use their search engine.

I guess I'll just have to wait until they start peddling a perspective you disagree with.

> If wikipedia contains cherry picked slander against a person, topic or website

Just remember that this is the comment we're discussing... how does one determine if a statement is slander? Are you telling me Google has teams of investigative journalists following up on each of their search results? Or did someone at Google form an opinion, then decide their opinion is the one that should be presented as "fact" on the most popular search engine in the world?

[erklik]

> Despite the fact that I've had around 50 interviews and countless articles written about my disclosure, my website zachvorhies.com doesn't show up on Google's search index, even when using the exact url as a query!

I am not sure what is happening but I directly searched for your website : zachvorhies.com on Google (in Australia, if that matters), which returned the website as the first result:

https://i.imgur.com/Z7RTsuE.png

[DenisM]

I'm in the US and Google does not display zachvorhies.com when searching for "zachvorhies.com".

[CriticalCathed]

Does for me. USA.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/S2rPywz.png

Also, is this guy a Q follower or something? The favicon is a Q.

[leereeves]

> Also, is this guy a Q follower or something? The favicon is a Q.

Actually the favicon is a headshot.

https://www.zachvorhies.com/favicon.ico

And that's also the icon in the page source:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href="favicon.ico" type=”image/x-icon” />

I wonder why Google shows a Q.

[dorgo]

> I wonder why Google shows a Q

A placeholder used if the algorithm thinks the favicon is not appropriate for some reason.

[erklik]

I would think the quotes would make a difference. I was not using quotes, does using quotes in the US still return the website? I would use a VPN and test it out but I am at work right now.

[dodobirdlord]

Not using quotes, the first result I get is his twitter account, and the second is a link to a Project Veritas piece about this document leak he describes. Hardly seems like he's getting buried.

[jjeaff]

Additionally, if you search "site:zachvorhies.com" you get the site. So it isn't de-indexed. It just isn't ranking well.

[eyegor]

[removed, for some reason I thought australia was part of the EU. I'm in the US, also did not see the site link through google]

[erklik]

I think the only time Australia has been part of some sort of European organization or group is when Australia competed in the Eurovision.

Anyhow, I would be interested to know what results you get in the EU.

[c3534l]

I'm in the US and I get the same search results. Although if I put in your name, I get your Twitter instead. Not sure why anyone would be searching for a dot com instead of going to it.

[erklik]

Same for me in Australia, searching for the name results in the Twitter handle showing up, and then a WikiSpooks websites and so forth. The website isn't even on the first page. I think that's rather concerning, that searching for a person's won't return their website but rather a twitter feed and other websites that have possibly optimized for SEO.

[ch17z]

Australia isn't in the EU.

For what it's worth, I'm in Australia and have the same search results as erklik.

[labombeatomique]

Ahh, Zachary Vorhies. I remember your bizarre internal posts literally claiming that Obama's birth certificate was fake. I wasn't surprised at all when you leaked a pile of confidential information to a far right conspiracy theorist group (Project Veritas), and were subsequently fired.

I wouldn't trust a single word that comes out of this guy's mouth.

[cjbillington]

FWIW I see your website as the first results when I google it:

https://imgur.com/a/jhx7N9D

[overgard]

For what it's worth, when I search for your site it's the first result. You have to click past the "did you mean", which searches on your name originally, but then it's there.

[kordlessagain]

Highly polarized views, like the one you hold, are a result of a multiplicity of communications between entities on the Internet. Those humans who are more prone to spontaneous visualizations or audio tend to follow patterns which use biased arguments over reasoned arguments. That nets you comments like:

> Don't listen to the people who say

> this beast has to do with a secret Page Rank score that Google's army of workers

Anyone who tells you to not listen to others intends to tell you gossip about why you shouldn't gather data that conflicts their own views. They'll SAY all sorts of things to try to make you "see" it their way. Rational people DO things to prove or disprove a given belief. (Just to note SAYING a bunch of stuff does not equal DOING a bunch of stuff.)

For anyone rational and interested, Google "this video will make you angry" and bump the speed to 75%. The idea is that memes will compete for "compute" space in both people's minds and the space in which they occupy the Internet. Those who get "infected" with a given meme, will go to all sorts of lengths to rationalize why that meme is true, even though the meme the arguing against is just as irrational as their own.

[Mauricio_]

>my website zachvorhies.com doesn't show up on Google's search index, even when using the exact url as a query!

Just searched it and it's literally the first result.