87Google Gone Wild: The Digital Threat to Reputation
reward blogs with high search rankings when they publish new con-
tent, even though blogs are often rushed into publication before sto-
ries can be fully researched. This “blog bonus” often causes false
negative information to quickly rise to the top of a Google search.
Users who share false or misleading Web content are not always
malicious or nasty. Many users just want to share what appears to be
an interesting piece of news or gossip with their friends and ac-
quaintances. These users are simply too eager to share and do not
think to do their own investigation into the truth of the news. Other
users are bloggers who want to be among the first to write about a
story, lest they be “scooped” by other bloggers or the so-called main-
stream media. These users let competitive pressure stand in the way
of thorough investigation.
And yet other users repeat false or misleading information be-
cause they are blinded by a cognitive bias that makes them more
likely to uncritically accept certain false information they see. Peo-
ple often believe stories that match their preconceptions about the
way the world works. A reader who believes that “the rich” are ruth-
less and greedy is more likely to accept a story about a wealthy
businessman’s malfeasance; a reader who believes that “the poor”
are responsible for their own plight is more likely to uncritically
accept a story about an unmotivated welfare recipient. Politically
active readers are more likely to believe (and share) a story about
misdeeds by the “other side” than about their own. The existence of
this type of bias is perhaps inevitable, but it has contributed
greatly to the speed at which false and inaccurate information
spreads. Many websites attract many people with similar biases—
ranging from political sites on both ends of the spectrum to news
discussion sites that are pro- or anti-copyright—which leads to
further reinforcement of each user’s biases because they consis-
tently share stories that reinforce the perceptions underlying their
biases.
The cycle is particularly dangerous because pages that contain
false, incomplete, misleading, or scandalous information often attract
88 Wild West 2.0
the most attention; for example, a tabloid blog about a celebrity’s al-
leged infidelity is often far more interesting than a dry biography or
his “official” website. As a result, users are more likely to read and talk
about controversial pages simply because of the human appetite for
scandal. Google takes the resulting discussions as a sign of the scan-
dalous page’s importance and then moves the page higher up the re-
sults list. The more prominent the scandalous page becomes in a
search engine, the more people will see it, discuss it, and comment on
it—all of which increases the apparent popularity of the page and
makes it more likely to appear even higher in a search. Once the cy-
cle has started, it rarely breaks on its own.
In short, the self-reinforcing cycle is “Google Gone Wild.” The
search engine uses a completely automated method to organize the
information on the Internet. But the automation also means that
there is nobody to step in and fix things when they go wrong. Search
engines that rely on the popularity of links can quickly spiral out of
control in a way that highlights controversial and false information.
And, because very few people perform their own independent re-
search, many readers will simply repeat the same false, incomplete,
misleading, or otherwise incorrect information. The resulting copies
of the same incorrect data can quickly overwhelm the first page of
search results, further reinforcing the false information. Once the
downward spiral has begun, it usually takes deliberate intervention
in order to stop the search engine gone wild.
Users Believe the “Google Truth”
By now, most people know better than to believe everything that they
read, especially online. But that does not stop many Web users from
giving too much weight to what they read online and from believing
the information that appears at the top of a Google search. The re-
sults from Google often appear to reflect the truth, but in reality they
are nothing more than the links that happen to be the most “popular,”
as measured by an arbitrary system of link-based counting. In other
words, the “Google Truth” (the collection of links that Google sug-
89Google Gone Wild: The Digital Threat to Reputation
gests are true and important) often replaces the real truth because
users fail to look deeper.
All too often, one event or perspective dominates the Google
Truth about somebody. The Google Truth often appears to summa-
rize a person’s life (thirty, fifty, or even seventy years’ worth of it) with
links to one event that happened to gather a lot of comment. Or,
thanks to a self-reinforcing cycle, a biased or false perspective may
dominate the Google Truth. And, all too often, readers take the
Google Truth seriously, as if a computer program really could figure
out what is important about somebody’s entire life and present it in
just a handful of links.
The authoritative look of Google’s search results contributes to
the problem. Google’s website looks like a professional arbiter of
truth and accuracy. If a Google search for somebody’s name—for ex-
ample, “Bill Gates”—returns a page of results all repeating the same
lie, then it appears that Google has at least impliedly endorsed those
results as being relevant and correct. Of course, Google disclaims all
responsibility for its search results, but many users still understand-
ably think that search results have somehow been vetted or approved
by Google’s computers. Part of this mistaken belief comes from a
natural trust of computers: Computers appear unbiased and rarely
make mistakes. The fact that Google’s search engine often returns
correct and unbiased results makes it all the more dangerous when
Google fails by returning false or misleading statements. Users be-
come accustomed to Google’s getting things right and don’t think
critically enough when Google gets it wrong. Because of their trust in
Google, users reinforce its failings.
Even earnest, careful, and unbiased users are often stymied by
the Google Truth. If false or misleading information is dominant in
the first page or two of search results, then even a careful reader
might never make it far enough through to find a glimmer of the
truth. Even the most conscientious reader cannot spend all day try-
ing to tease the truth out from tens or hundreds of pages that tell dif-
ferent tales. If false information has been so often repeated as to
90 Wild West 2.0
effectively smother the truth, then the false information will become
the Google Truth.
There is yet one more problem with the Google Truth. Even if a
user is able to wade through a series of false or misleading pages in order
to find the truth about a subject, the existence and popularity of the false
pages will give a false impression that the subject is mired in controversy.
A false appearance of controversy can be just as bad as actual guilt in
some professions: teachers, police officers, and babysitters could all have
their careers ruined by a false impression of a controversy over their
character. And the reputations of a small business can be severely
harmed by a false controversy over the quality of its workmanship.
No Means to Respond
The damage done by search engines is increased by the fact that no
major search engine provides any meaningful way for a victim of false
information to respond to false allegations. If the Google Truth
about your reputation is a complete lie, Google will simply disclaim
all responsibility for its search results and suggest that you build a
personal web page to correct the record. It will not remove most false
information from its search index or allow you to meaningfully com-
ment on or respond to the false results.
Search engines claim that any means of response would open
them up to manipulation and spamming. But the real answer is
much easier: To a search engine company, profit is more important
than fairness. Even if it would be fair and just to allow victims to re-
spond, search engine companies know that it might hurt their busi-
ness in the long run. And search engine companies believe that it
would be too expensive to have a live human mediate each dispute.
So, the companies just pretend that the problem of false online in-
formation does not exist and leave victims of the company’s services
to fend for themselves.
But telling users “go make your own web page with the truth, and
maybe people will find it” is really no answer at all. Controversial and
false pages tend to gather more attention and links than accurate
pages; the truth is usually less interesting than rumors and lies. Fur-
91Google Gone Wild: The Digital Threat to Reputation
ther, even if a victim could make her own homepage and get it into the
first page of Google results, that would still not erase the damage done
by false and misleading sites. Users would still have no way to know
whether the victim was telling the truth, and if the lies outnumbered
the truth by nine to one, then very few people would believe the truth.
So far, Google is the only major search engine to even try to offer
victims of online reputation damage a chance to respond at all.
Google has created an experimental feature (Google Search Wiki)
that allows users to make brief comments on search results. But these
comments are not displayed unless a searcher goes out of her way to
enable them. And the comments suffer from the same problem as the
rest of a search: anybody can comment on any result, and there is no
way to screen true or false comments. Nothing about the system gives
any priority to the victim and the search comments could easily be
flooded by an attacker or users just repeating the same wrong infor-
mation. Google also offers a “Google Profile” that allows individuals to
write a short description of themselves. These profiles are experi-
mental and have been appearing at the bottom of Google searches for
personal names. Google claims that victims of online false informa-
tion can use them to recover their good names. But Google Profiles
are too little and too late: they appear only at the bottom of the page
and are more or less useless to people with common names.
The Modern Panopticon: Google Sees All
Economists have predicted ten of the
last three recessions.
—COMMON ADAGE
Google knows ten of three true things about you.
—INTERNET REALITY
Without Google, much of the harmful content online would be ir-
relevant. The backwaters of the Internet would stay obscure. Nasty
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