How Extremists Manipulate PageRank
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/16/google-autocomplete-rightwing-bias-algorithm-political-propaganda
Google’s PageRank Algorithm, despite being one of the most advanced in the industry, still relies on the same basic functions of PageRank that we have discussed in class. How many links reference a site, how many other sites that site links to, and how much traffic a site receives, are among the most important factors for determining how high a page ranks on Google. On top of this, Google tends to make personal suggestions to users based on what it expects they will click on. However, as shown in this article, this system is both very easy to manipulate and tends to naturally promote politically charged, often extremist, pages.
Users who tend to be more active politically are usually more partisan than their peers. Google sees this and recommends content that leans into their political views, creating an echo chamber in which the user gets more and more partisan results. The user gives these sites more traffic, and their page rank gets elevated further in the search. As a result, these pages start to leak out of their partisan corners and begin to get recommended to a wider audience, exposing more people to extremist views and expanding their reach. Additionally, many of these extremist pages have grown increasingly aware of how PageRank works, and will fill their sites up with popular keywords, links, and other SEO content in hopes of artificially increasing their page rank.
While Google has tried to take action against this type of polarizing content and PageRank manipulation, it has done so only to the scrutiny of others. Conservatives argue that their content is often suppressed further in the search results, while liberals argue that not enough is being done by Google to prevent hateful content from appearing in results. Regardless of how advanced PageRank has become, preventing the spread of extremist content continues to be one of the largest challenges faced by tech companies today.