Feb 29, 2012 at 2:12am ET by Danny Sullivan

As Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum loses two primary races to rival Mitt Romney, perhaps he can console himself with, ironically, another loss. Spreading Santorum, the page defining "santorum" as a by-product of anal sex, has finally dropped from the top results on Google. The related anti-Santorum blog, however, remains. And a page from Urban Dictionary keeps the definition alive, more explicit than before. Santorum: The Definition Page The page at SpreadingSantorum.com, created by columnist Dan Savage as a protest against Santorum's views about homosexuality, has maintain [...]

Google, Yahoo Both Fail At Moneyballing Oscar Predictions

Feb 27, 2012 at 12:47pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Both Google and Yahoo used search data to create their own Oscar ballots. Turns out, their predictions were terribly wrong. At best, Google may have correctly predicted Meryl Streep winning, depending on how you read things. But overall, neither of them really got the winners right. Google's predictions are here; Yahoo's here. Let's see how they did! Best Picture Google: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (or The Artist, Midnight In Paris) Yahoo: War Horse Winner: The Artist What went wrong here? With Google, it's actually hard to know what it was predicting. It narrowed thi [...]

Related Topics: Search & Society: General | Top News

Is SEO Killing America?

Feb 23, 2012 at 4:55pm ET by Vanessa Fox

Last week at the Tools of Change conference, Clay Johnson, author of the new book The Information Diet gave a keynote talk titled "Is SEO Killing America". Sigh. If you've been involved in search for any length of time, your first reaction may be, this again? Haven't we done this before? Once or twice? Clay's a friend of mine and I've read his book (it's quite good, by the way), so I knew both that he doesn't really think that SEO is killing America and that he's unaware just how much we're all over this particular linkbait-y title. And indeed his talk was not about how SEO is kill [...]

Related Topics: Features: Analysis | Search & Society: General | Top News

Bing & Google: “Spreading Romney” Ranking Tops For “Romney” Is Normal

Feb 14, 2012 at 12:37pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Bing and Google have weighed in on the amazing rise in less than a month of the Spreading Romney site to the first page of their results for a search on "romney." That's apparently business as usual. Prepare for further "Spreading" sites for other candidates to rank as well? Perhaps, but without some Rachel Maddow-like mentions, they might not get there. Spreading Romney's Remarkable Rise My earlier story, Now, Mitt Romney Has A Santorum-Like Bing & Google Problem, explains how the Spreading Romney site created by Jack Shepler skyrocketed to the first page of Google's listings within [...]

Now, Mitt Romney Has A Santorum-Like Bing & Google Problem

Feb 10, 2012 at 1:36pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Perhaps Google may finally have to figure out a "fix" for Rick Santorum's "Google Problem," now that an anti-Romney site is making it appear that anyone can rank any protest page for any politician's name. Bing has the same problem, but no one ever seems to care about that. Spreading Romney I was pretty surprised to discover the "Spreading Romney" site appearing in the top results on Google and Bing in a search for "romney" that I did today. I don't recall seeing it recently, so it appears to be a new gain. Here it is on Google, as the ninth regular listing: I've also seen it as high a [...]

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