There is nothing more shocking, and enlightening, to me than the silly Google Spies story published by Alex Jones over at Prison Planet – the Alex Jones website. Throughout the years, I’ve been involved in a wide variety of online publications and activities – from technical writing and software reviews for MakeUseOf.com, investigative research busting scams over at RealityUncovered.com, and writing on a wide variety of topics for clients all across the web.
One of the skills that I’ve picked up over the years is an in-depth understanding of Search Engine research and SEO optimization.
Now, the reason the Alex Jones story about Google Spies is so shocking is because Alex essentially tried to introduce a term into the list of high search trends, and then he subsequently pointed to the disappearance of that search trend from Google results as evidence that there are “Google Spies” that are manipulating authentic search trends.
The story is also enlightening because it is proof positive that Alex Jones is a complete moron, as are the other writers that worked on this story for the Alex Jones website.
Alex Jones and His Google Spies Fraud
Before we get to the SEO explanation for what really took place, let’s have a look at the Alex Jones “Google Censorship” theory.
On July 20, Steve Watson, a writer for the Alex Jones website, writes the following:
“The ongoing saga with Google censorship has continued today as it emerged that once again the search engine giant removed a key term from it’s trends pages.”
This alone is an interesting claim – and it caught my eye because I spend at least six to eight hours a day studying Google Search trends, and the manipulation of those trends by Google would be pretty disturbing. Exploring further, we see that Steve provides more of the background.
“Alex Jones yesterday asked his readers and listeners to send the term “Google spies” to the top of the trends charts in the latest effort to fight back against the company’s censorship of his films on YouTube.”
Aha…any SEO expert worth their salt will recognize this activity for what it is. This is a manipulation of Google Search trends similar to the “Googlebombs” prank back around 2007. Essentially, bloggers would get thousands of readers to create links back to a site using an obscure term – the earliest linkbomb of this type was for the phrase “talentless hack.”
It didn’t take very long for Google to catch on to this game, and modify the algorithm so that it recognizes when this sort of manipulation is taking place. The goal of Google’s algorithm “tweaking” is to remove the ability for pranksters and other idiots to manipulate authentic Google results with garbage and irrelevent terms.
Prison Planet Fabricated the “Google Spies” Drama
Steve Watson, who by this point we now realize knows nothing about how search engines work, continues:
“Within a short time the term had hit the top spot with the “volcanic” status added (see below – click for enlargement).”
Steve then displayed an image of Google Trends “hot searches” page, which shows the most recent top searches in near realtime. This page changes constantly, as more and more new trends make it to the top of the list. This is what that highly dynamic page looks like:
Steve continues to explain the big huge “conspiracy” that he sees as proof that Google is in kahoots with the U.S. government.
“However, within half an hour the term had been completely removed by Google and resulted in no news story links. These actions replicated Google’s activity in the days beforehand when it removed other terms such as “The Obama Deception”, “Infowars”, “Fall of the Republic” and “Google Censorship” ? which had all become some of the most searched topics on the internet.”
This is, of course, exactly how the “hot trends” page works! Terms don’t stay very long – especially when the trend is being manipulated by Prison Planet within a short time span (immediately after publication of the article). In fact, the trend was never “removed” – it still remains logged within the history of Google Trends, safe and sound. Take a look at the recorded blip where Prison Planet forced people to manipulated the “hottest trending term” on Google Trends.
There it is – you can see the logged “blip” of traffic – nothing has been “removed” by Google. Want more proof that the searches were never removed from search results by Google? Check out the listings from Google Adwords Keywords tool for the term.
There it is at the very top, with a significantly high monthly search volume, and very low competition level – which, in SEO terms, indicates a search term that is very niche, and which very few websites out there are bothering to write about. This makes sense in the case of the term Google Spies – because it was fabricated by Alex Jones and Prison Planet in order to generate drama, and create this ridiculous story that Google is spying for the government.
And – oh the irony – Steve then asks his Alex Jones website readers to fight back against this nasty Google censorship by conducting yet another manipulation of the “hot trends” results:
“Today we urge you to search the term “Google Launches Cover Up” to make this article one of the most widely read on the internet.”
Pure, unadulterated, idiocy.
Ryan Dube is editor-in-chief of TSW and an electrical engineer in the automation industry. He spends his time investigating declassified government documents, legends and conspiracy theories. Ryan has 296 post(s) at Top Secret Writers
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