Americans taking their first look at Rick Santorum are in for a surprise if they try to Google him for more information.
The first link you'll find won't be a discussion of Santorum's conservative political views, or a campaign brochure, or even criticism of the former Pennsylvania senator's congressional record.
The first link offers a faux definition of the word "santorum" as the byproduct of a sex act - a very graphic definition, at that. Because the definition appears right on the search results page, it's convincing enough that someone might be convinced the suddenly prominent Republican presidential candidate has suffered from an unfortunate coincidence involving his last name for his entire life.
In fact, the "coincidence" is only about eight years old.
In 2003, Santorum angered many in the gay and lesbian community when he appeared to tell an Associated Press reporter -- in very twisted language -- that gay sex was not entitled to privacy protections, and could therefore be banned by the government.
(A transcript of his interview is here. There are other interpretations of his remarks.)
Publication of the interview caused outrage among gays, and it eventually found voice in Seattle-based sex columnist Dan Savage, who took up a suggestion from a reader and decided to play a Google trick on Santorum. He held a contest to decide precisely how to define "santorum," then created a Web page that did so called SpreadingSantorum.com, and finally he helped create a network of other Web pages that pointed to the page. Soon enough, SpreadingSantorum became the top search result for Google (and Bing, and Yahoo) searches of "santorum."
"Real" links about the former senator appear farther down in the search results.
Tricking Google results is a common practice by those using search engine optimization tricks. It's a constant cat-and-mouse game between Google's algorithm writers and anyone who has a desire to manipulate what happens when Internet users scratch a search engine itch. Companies worried about random customer complaints can employ tactics to push down the negative remarks so casual searchers don't find them. Others find ways to make links to their Web pages more prominent than competitors' pages.
It's easy to use SEO tactics to create faux definitions or Internet memes, too. Not long ago, I played such a trick on the audience at the RSA technology conference with fellow speaker Hugh Thompson. We make up a concept -- "context reflux" and seeded the Internet with it. Then we played a fake game of balderdash with them, letting the audience vote on which definition of the word was accurate. Thousands voted: No one questioned that the Internet might be lying about the definition, which was the point of the exercise.
While clicking on SpreadingSantorum.com brings up a page that includes only the sex act definition, and indicates the word also refers to the former senator, users who click again find plenty of content regarding Santorum's political positions. That makes the website political satire. While Santorum has called the site "filth," he has conceded that it's protected by the First Amendment.
Politically motivated search manipulation has a long -- and mixed -- tradition. In 2007, searches for "miserable failure" pushed users towards a biography of George W. Bush. (That trick is more rightly called a “Google bomb,” but the effect is much the same.)
Google has refused to manually remove such pages or results in the past, but it has tinkered with its algorithm to demote such results. It ultimately did so with "miserable failure." So far, even after contacts from Santorum's campaign, the firm hasn't taken any steps to demote Savage's SpreadingSantorum.com page.
Should Santorum remain a prominent presidential candidate, he might manage to overcome the SEO problem the old-fashioned way -- by inspiring thousands of websites and links to his real content. That's no small task, however. More than 47,000 Facebook users "like" Savage's page, and he has an eight-year head start on Google's magic formula for results.
It should be noted that while many parents would not want their children to see Savage's page, schoolchildren searching for information on Sen. Santorum can be shielded from it if adults turn on Google's SafeSearch feature. Also, searches for "Rick Santorum" or "Sen. Santorum" pull up the expected results.
For much more on Sen. Santorum's Google problem, including a discussion of potential political bias by Google, see Danny Sullivan's excellent explanation at SearchEngineLand.
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