Google is leaving the roots that made it a success-- using bottom-up algorithms that based search results on the behaviors of millions of people. Google has been changing its search criteria so it favors top-down mainstream media, while hurting alternative media Under the guise of addressing the problems with "fake news,"

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Google is leaving the roots that made it a success-- using bottom-up algorithms that based search results on the behaviors of millions of people.

Google has been changing its search criteria so it favors top-down mainstream media, while hurting alternative media Under the guise of addressing the problems with "fake news," Google has used it's almost monopoly search engine position to decimate search results for bottom-up, grassroots alternative media. I don't have evidence to prove it, but I believe that this is exactly what the biggest mainstream media want-- to take out their bottom-up competition.

What would a Google attack on a website look like? Because Google is a search engine, an attack would deprecate the search result rank of a website. Google doesn't attack websites or people directly. They do it by modifying their algorithms. That means they change the weighting of factors that they consider in ranking a site. Google uses hundreds of different factors to assess site rank. Factors include number of links in to the site from other sites, security of the site (Https sites are favored over http sites, for example,) freshness of content, number of visitors to the site, to name a few

Imagine that a website had search results that put it at the top of the first page results. Deprecation would put it at the bottom of the first page or on the second, third or even 20th page.

I know because I've been following, for at least ten years, some of the key words for the website I founded and operate, OpEdNews.com. For many years OpEdNews was at the top of the first page search results, ranging from first to third place for the key words Progressive Opinion, Liberal Opinion and Liberal News.

Though our site traffic had not dropped by much, gradually, Google's algorithm moved us down to the bottom of the first result page and then often the front page altogether, and then off the the second page. By then our traffic was being hurt.

This past week Google confirmed that it had again tweaked its search algorithm. So I, as I've done many times, I checked out the keywords I listed above. The results were clear. Not only was OpEdNews further down in page rank, but so were many other progressive news and opinion sites. The top ranks were replaced by big mainstream media, what many in the alternative media consider to be fake liberal, fake progressive. These include New York Times and the networks, even FOX. Then there's a Linkedin page for a group-- that has two followers, and there a number of aggregators who have lists of liberal or progressive sites. Even such aggregation is top down.

This latest Google attack by algorithm is bad for all alternative media, is bad for what Antonio Lopez calls the media ecosystem. But it may also be bad for Google, which earned its almost monopoly status by smartly tapping the wisdom of the crowd. The reality is that when people tap the power of bottom-up they can sometimes achieve top-down status. After all, understanding the bottom-up aspects of people's behavior and the role in business can lead to great wealth and power.

In the hero's journey myth, the person on the journey fails to become a hero if he or she gets stuck on the road, dazzled by the new power he or she achieves. Google is at such a turning point. It used to have a policy-- "Do no evil." As a mega-billion dollar organization, the challenge to not do evil has become more complex. Now, Google has to be sure that evil is not allowed to seep into its algorithms.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.

His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

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