Comment by paulddraper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulddraper | Hacker News Reader

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Obviously lacks the privacy aspect, but I've noticed Bing is also politically neutral.

This seems to be a Google-specific problem.

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Example that I just double-checked: (I don't claim any political views here; JUST an example)

Reddit's largest subreddit for a political candidate is r/The_Donald. Objectively, a rather popular site.

Google (with or without SafeSearch) returns zero results for "Reddit The_Donald" linking to the subreddit. [1] It's only results are indirect discussions about the subreddit.

Whereas DuckDuckGo, Bing, and Yahoo show the subreddit itself as the very first result. [2] [3] [4] (https://np.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/ which is Reddit's public non-logged in site.)

So Google won't display a high-traffic site. I can only assume they find the content objectionable and so will not link directly to it. I understand how some may want that, but that's not a simply not a service I want my search engine to perform, especially when SafeSearch is disabled.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=Reddit+The_Donald

[2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Reddit+The_Donald

[3] https://www.bing.com/search?q=Reddit+The_Donald

[4] https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Reddit+The_Donald

r/The_Donald is "quarantined" by Reddit, which means you get a gateway page if you visit for the first time, asking if you really want to visit it (try an incognito window). In the HTML, you'll see that there's a "noindex" metatag that Reddit is instructing Google not to index it.

Also, np.reddit.com seems to be excluded from all search engines: https://np.reddit.com/robots.txt.

I'm not sure why Bing is ignoring both the robots.txt and the "noindex" metatag.

In another comment [1] I compare this with a pro-Marxist subreddit which is similarly "quarantined" and has noindex.

Google indexes it perfectly. [2]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21316065

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=Reddit+ChapoTrapHouse

I understand why one might expect r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse to have similar results, since they're both politically extreme subreddits. But after having worked in SEO for a pretty long time, I can't conclude that Googlebot is evaluating political affiliation with n=2 examples on n=1 sites. Instead, incoming links quality/quantity, popularity, competition, newsworthiness, age, and dozens of other ordinary differences between these pages and queries are usually the reason. Even the underscore in The_Donald likely matters.

It can get pretty frustrating to rank #1 or #2 for a query, and not rank at all for a slightly different, higher-traffic query, like using the plural, a hyphen, different capitalization, or an article.

It could be that Bings index is outdated.

I thought that DDG is effectively a (privacy-preserving) front-end on Bing, so it makes sense that Bing would give the same or similar results. (Maybe they're doing some of their own indexing these days? I haven't been paying close attention.)

That would make sense why I've noticed the same sorts of results.

Google doesn't look like it indexs any subreddits under the np.reddit.com subdomain.

That's a red herring. All subreddit content is available under both www.reddit.com and np.reddit.com. (I'm not 100% sure why Reddit has both.)

Example:

r/ChapoTrapHouse is a left-leaning political subreddit (and in the interest of true apples-to-apples comparison, also has a content warning by Reddit like the earlier example).

"Reddit ChapoTrapHouse" has top results for www. or np. from all search engines.

* Google: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/ [1]

* DuckDuckGo: https://np.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/ [2]

* Bing: https://np.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/ [3]

* Yahoo: https://np.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/ [4]

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=Reddit+ChapoTrapHouse

[2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Reddit+ChapoTrapHouse

[3] https://www.bing.com/search?q=Reddit+ChapoTrapHouse

[4] https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Reddit+ChapoTrapHouse

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I'd love a simpler explanation than "Google being politically biased Big Brother", but I can't see one.

> All subreddit content is available under both www.reddit.com and np.reddit.com. (I'm not 100% sure why Reddit has both.)

np.reddit.com stands for "no participation". np.reddit.com disables comment and voting. It's intended so that links to niche subreddits from popular subreddits like /r/BestOf don't result in a flood of outsider activity that disrupts the niche subreddit.

"np" is being treated as a country code, like every other two letter string. xy.reddit.com also works. Country codes were meant for localization.

Somehow moderators decided to start using it for "no participation", and many subreddits use custom CSS to disable commenting and voting on np.reddit.com/r/whatever. But np.reddit.com with custom styles off works just like normal reddit.

I'm sure Nepal is very offended.

The singular form of "data" isn't "anecdote".

If you search "news" on Google, the 2nd result is Fox News[1] (first being Google News). Half the suggested articles by Google on my phone are from Fox News, even though I've never clicked on any article from there. I do not use that to conclude that Google is politically biased.

1. https://www.google.com/search?q=news

It's generally poor form to direct link a Google search as a reference as you can never be sure if the results will be the same tomorrow or if the person clicking it will get personalized results that differ from those you get.

I agree with that too. That's how GP was providing "evidence" for their claims, however, so it seemed a fitting way to respond.

The parent poster was inputting the search term "Reddit The_Donald"

(https://www.google.com/search?q=Reddit+The_Donald)

Whether or not you are logged into Reddit, the first page of Google results (and I suspect the rest of them) don't display the actual link to the /r/The_Donald subreddit. It _does_ link to a bunch of articles about how the sub was quarantined, and the first result (for me) is a wikipedia page.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com