Google is the EU Remain campaign's secret weapon Google has demoted the site EU Referendum to “below the fold” in searches for the term “EU referendum”, where it isn’t visible to most web surfers unless they scroll down. The political site, which was founded by author and researcher Richard A.E. North in 2004, was the top search result for the topical expression across all …
* The UK isn't interested in the European project (practical reason).
* Its best for Britain, especially if the UK overtakes Germany to become #1 economy (economic reason).
* I want Ireland out of CTA and into Schengen, which will never happen unless the UK breaks away (personal reason).
* But it wont happen. There's too many negative campaigns warning of a looming holocaust. Just like the Scottish vote there is interest, but its not enough versus people's 'fear of change'...
I can't believe that I couldn't find anyone using an anti-brexit slogan like "Brexit breaks it".
The smear campaigns practically write themselves with a name like Brexit...
Not that I want the UK to leave the EU, first they join the EU and act as the extension of USA's penis to fuck up / veto many important EU decisions. And now that they've pretty much broken the EU, the UK just wants to leave the sinking ship? Na-uh, you're going down with us!
@AC
first they join the EU
No they did NOT join the EU they voted to join a non political Common Market. It was only after that that Germany and France pushed for, and showed, the political leftist dominance that they both wanted. Unfortunately the left in the UK were quite happy to go along with that which brings us to the mess the UK is in today.
Actually, the original plans involved complete financial integration, however, it was the French, still wary of the Germans trying to take them over, that diluted the original plans they were building.
Complete financial union was definitely an original part of the idea behind it, and it was originally proposed by the French, before they changed their minds. The Germans were always wanting to be a part of it to try and recover financially from the penalties of the war, and accepted either idea, although they initially preferred financial union.
especially if the UK overtakes Germany to become #1 economy
Not going to happen. Not only will the Germans have a MUCH larger market to sell into thanks to the EU, but they also didn't make the mistake British governments have made to move to a mainly service based industry. UK's engineering ingenuity was pretty much the best in the world until someone decided that it was more beneficial to a few to focus on money laundering banking.
Just try to find a plumber who knows what he's doing - those who do are either foreign or unaffordable..
Rubbish, you've been taken in by the propaganda. British industry - even after the destruction wrought to our steel and aluminium producers by the EU climate regulations BS - is still the sixth largest on Earth, particularly in pharmaceuticals, aerospace and armaments. Further, as to our engineering excellence, even Germany pays us to build their Formula one cars.
The additional climate costs on the steel industry by any carbon tax (and its only a couple of percent or less I think if you look at the analysis) are dwarfed by lack of investment and cheaper imports - (tarriffs on imports to the EU were blocked by those arch europhiles the UK government.....). If you think that by leaving the EU, investment will not shift to large companies other EU plants, you may well be in for an unpleasant surprise. As far as engineering excellence is concerned yes we have some but have you noticed where virtually all our trains are built these days (a clue its not the UK). The same goes for shipping. The one person I know who really knows economics and markets (i.e. a professor in said subject) says that from an economic point of view the brexit plans don't really make sense (even IDS on the radio the other morning tacitly admitted that if there was an economic downturn it was a price worth paying......). But yes by all means vote brexit - but you may live to regret it.
That would be all the sales to countries on the UK's OWN list of evil regimes.
Most of the non-military Aerospace is European contracts, government "pork barrel" support of UK companies involved in Electronics from 1950s onwards helped destroy the UK consumer Electronics industry and make UK electronics and semiconductors uncompetitive.
Steel and coal production weren't profitable probably from before 1914, but became strategic. There is a good reason why they were nationalised.
Take out Oil, dishonest Financial Services, immoral arms sales what is left?
Germany has more real economy, While it's true that Nigeria and Afghanistan have a corruption issue, the UK is the most corrupt in the world courtesy of The City Of London / Financial services who are parasites. Too much of Britain's GDP comes from their money laundering and speculation and currency manipulation, so successive UK governments of all hues never interfere.
Take out so called "Financial Services" and Scottish oil, then what has UK got compared to Germany?
I think it would be good for Ireland in several ways. It might prove good for Scotland and Northern Ireland if they vote to remain in the EU while letting England and Wales leave. It would probably be good for the Conservative and Unionist Party once there's no Union and the Unionists (both Political and Trade) are left to vote in the former provinces. Ideally the implementation of Brexit would coincide with a change of Monarch so there's a chance to re-define the role and term of office of head of state.
"Its best for Britain, especially if the UK overtakes Germany to become #1 economy (economic reason)"
Umm, that cannot and will not happen. Ever. Anyone who has a strong knowledge of economics and state finances will tell you that.
For the simple fact that Germany's manufacturing capacity outstrips the UK's by a factor of 10. The amount of capital investment required would be enormous, and it is simply not going to be available for the most expensive country in the western world.
The best chance the UK has outside the EU is to become an offshore banking center, but sadly even that is not likely to have much of an effect since (a) no matter how big the banking sector, it cannot provide enough GDP for 57 million people and (b) offshore banking centers are going the way of the dodo as states put the screws on them to stop tax avoidance.
Focus more on facts than wishful thinking - the world runs on them.
"....Germany's manufacturing capacity...." Actually, quite the opposite. Whilst Germany currently has more capacity (but nowhere near ten times as you stated), it is foolish to talk of Germany alone when Germany's future, by EU diktat, means you have to talk about Germany merely as the largest piece of the rest of the EU economy. Whilst Germany shines, countries like Greece drag on the EU economy like a lead-filled albatross. Even more of a problem in EU terms is the situation in France, where the unions are fighting against the deregulations required to allow French companies to compete with Germany. In short, the French unions are fighting to keep a minority employed and well-paid and saying screw the large number of unemployed. The Greeks can improve but it is highly likely the French will not. Germany needs a net immigration of about 100,000 cheap labour per year to remain at the level of competitive performance, so maybe the unemployed French can got to Germany? No, because migrants are flooding in from outside the EU and are a lot cheaper to employ, even if the French unemployed were willing to get off their state benefits and move to Germany for work. Italy is in a similar position to France - competitive only in a narrow range of the economic market, with too many young unemployed. So that's the second and third Euro economies going backwards. So, when you talk about the UK being unable alone to overtake Germany, the truth is we don't have to, we just have to get rid of the yoke of bailing out countries like Greece and then perform better than the EU average (which we already do comfortably), and the Germans will be the ones crippled by being left picking up the bill for the rest of the EU. Those are economic facts.
"It is vital that people should realise Google's potential (or actual) power." Quite. I don't think Google is actually under an obligation to be evenhanded and changing this would require something quite drastic. One such thing could be having the only permissible business model for search to be fully paid by its end users by micropayments, the idea being that a straightforward buyer-seller market* with competing vendors would keep search providers honest.
* instead of Google's constellation of interlocking, cross-subsidized markets amounting to the mother of all multi-sided markets (where a viable competitor in the combined market ought somehow to scale multiple barriers of entry at once)
My top results are:
HM Government, BBC, The Guardian and About my Vote.
That seems fair; the government official site, the Electoral Commission and the top two news sites without a paywall. I'd expect all of those to be ranked above a lobbying site from either side.
Google has also added a "register to vote" link to the homepage.
It shows up in 7th place in my results for 'EU Referendum' below UK Government, BBC, The Guardian, The Week and The Telegraph which seems about right given they all have much larger readerships (and that website only has an Alexa ranking of ~28,500 in the UK, for example). What's the issue supposed to be exactly?
It's just a silly conspiracy theory.
The site in question was probably top of the rankings for the term "EU Referendum" in the past because, before Call Me Dave and co decided we could have one, the referendum wasn't in the news much. Now, it is - it's being mentioned left, right and centre, so lots of stuff is competing with that blog for the top rankings.
(But the point that Google's search results can have an effect on what voters decide is almost certainly valid - and an interesting problem.)
There is something in what you say, but what about Bing and Yahoo? they still have the blog at #1. That could be because they are not as efficient as Google, but that raises a cogent point. ARE those latecomer sites to the issue really worthy of shooting to the top just because of their large readerships? Should not Google include some sort of damping to the google rank system so that these rank changes happen more gradually? That way a really on-point blog like this one would not always be shoved out in the cold as sssn ans the world notices their cause.
>> That could be because they are not as efficient as Google
Yahoo.... "could be" - seriously??
>> really worthy of shooting to the top just because of their large readerships?
This is the whole point of google and why it won. They've shot to the top because of the reputation of the website and the reputation of the sites that link to the website.
I don't want an algorithm saying to itself... "Yes this site is obviously better but I'm going to keep it in 27th place because I have to pretend information has inertia"
Should not Google include some sort of damping to the google rank system…
Worth pointing out that Google is not a public utility but a private search and advertising company. As such it is largely able to do what the fuck it wants with search results. As long as it is not favouring its own products over competitors…
PS. Yahoo uses Bing
Nor should Google keep a less-popular site ranked higher purely because the author got in there early on the subject. No matter which way they try to balance it there will be some people unhappy with the outcome, most people ambivalent and a few others will proclaim a massive conspiracy has occurred and the end of the world is nigh.
There are many reasons a site might move up or down your google results. Some may be sinister, others realistic, but I don't think any fit both descriptions.
In the case of a political hot topic, it's almost certainly other sites moving up rather than your favourite moving down. Sites that google users click on and appear to stay on (google can see if you return to its results page and try another link after 30 secs). Sites that other people link to in relevant discussion. Etcetera. They've spent 20 years perfecting the engine to bring up the most relevant and interesting results for the most of their users, and doing constant battle with "SEO" spammers who try to subvert that.
If you feel strongly about a particular "side" in the EU referendum, then human nature for many people is confirmation bias & it's various associated effects to kick in.
So, someone may feel the BBC website is the most biased thing in the universe, but a dispassionate n examination of the content there would be unlikely to prove that hypothesis.
Personally, the sooner all this is over the better, both sides are irritating me with their playground level of behaviour.
As a reader both of LabourList and ConservativeHome I can confirm that the majority of people (who post) on both sides of the political spectrum think that the BBC is terribly biased against them. According to the Tories the BBC is full of right on, guardian reading lefties and according to Labour it's run by old-school tie, secret tories constantly championing the right wing.
The fact that as well as this the remain camp feels the BBC is biased and gives too much weight to cranks and doesn't correct dodgy claims of billions of pounds of phantom savings, and the leave camp feels the BBC is biased and gives too much weight to fear-mongering and official pronouncements of doom should come as no surprise.
But in a way it's funny that the leave campaign who constantly bang on about loving Britain and doing what's best for Britain and how Britain can be the greatest if there's just less red tape and regulation are the ones most shrill about the BBC, possibly the most well respected British institution in the world, and constantly demand more regulation and rules to control it's behaviour.
FFIW: Remain Please!
and even beer mats.
(It occurs to me that a certain pub chain who specialise in undercutting the prices of others would not be disadvantaged much if the average Brit's spending power was decimated. They would just inherit the customers from more expensive pubs. The end of cheap booze runs would not hurt them either. And if it were a little harder to go to Euro matches in person, then their pubs would be fuller on those match days.)
You may have missed the elephant in the room.
<tinfoil hat mode>
Google are terrified that they are on a hiding to nothing and will incur the wrath and multi-billion Euro fines so are instigating and encouraging a UK exit from the EU which might well be the start of the toppling dominoes leading to Google trading in 27 separate broken and dishevelled nations where they can clean up by playing them off against each other with promises of bailing them out of the bog they just landed in.
</tinfoil hat mode>
@Nick Kew "Google can see if you return to its results page and try another link after 30 secs" and uses this to help adjust its rankings - sites people hand around longer on get upranked..
Now that raises an interesting point. (Slightly off-topic, but this is The Register after all.) Let's assume that Google is quite good at measuring the length of your visits that way (which shouldn't be too difficult). Well, it should work well for people who habitually use only a single browser window and seldom make use of tabs.
But what about those among us who habitually open most things in new tabs? There are quite a few of us (particularly amongst more technically inclined communites, such as this one) who will typically search on a phrase and then open as many links in background tabs as seems sensible before flipping over to read them or (if they don't have what you want) discard them.
Google has no way to tell how long we spend on those pages.
Well, it has lots and lots of ways, starting with their damn analytics webspam. I suppose the question is (a) how extensive and smart is their linking of these different information sources? and (b) should I go out and buy a tin foil hat before asking (a)?
North has spent the last few years slinging buckets of slime over all his allies and banning any critical comments. The Remainers, on the other hand, he rarely attacks.
He is now alone and ignored. He doesn't need any manual intervention from Google: he's flown his site into the ground all on his own.
Most of his traffic is probably remainers looking for some useful points to attack the leavers with.
I Googled and got:
Vote Leave site
News on EU Referendum
HMG's EU Referendum site
BBC "All you need to know about the EU Referendum" (1)
EUReferendum.com
Might be a case of the Striesland effect?
Whether you are pro or anti Brexit, or undecided, I would recommend that you have a look at Dr North's site. I can imagine that he might be a "difficult" person to work with, but in this largely truth and vision free "campaign" he's one of the few with a handle on the facts and with a developed exit plan of how to leave the EU safely, without the threatened Fear-Uncertainty-Doom, and why the future would be better outside.
(1) Aunty Beep of course knows best and so has done your thinking for you ;-)
Why would anyone who wants Brexit want more traffic for North's site?
All he does is slime everyone in the leave camp, day in, day out.
If Google were really involved here and wanted to help 'remain' they would give him a high ranking so his daily attacks on 'leave' got more publicity.
I suspect Orlowski's motives in lifting this madman into some publicity: North is not a friend of the 'leave' campaign.
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