Why did Google see essay as ‘conservatives against interracial marriage’?

Commentary by Kay B. Day

After reading about the Louisiana justice of the peace who refused a marriage license to a couple because they are from different races, I wrote an essay about my family's experience with interracial marriage. I figured I had insight many would lack—my daughter and son-in-law have similar family backgrounds but their skin colors are different. To my surprise, when I checked my statistics, I found the following search string: ‘conservatives against interracial marriage.’ This was upsetting because I’d done an earlier article about the wedding—the article included insight on how our families supported the newlyweds. [Article continues after graphic.]

Screen snip of a return on my essay about interracial marriage; IP number scrubbed for privacy.Curious, I put the same search string into the Google engine. Of course results may change with each search. I searched under blogs because that’s technically how The US Report is set up. Results are as follows for top 10 returns on Sunday afternoon:

1.Obama makes interracial marriages finally acceptable? [Conservative site Dirty Rotten Scoundrels]
2.Obama credited with making interracial marriage acceptable [Conservative site Michelle Malkin]
3.Neo-cons Rejoice: Interracial Marriage Denied [Insurance forum with political chatter]
4.What type of marriage infuriates conservative people more? [Ask 500 people]
5.Love is a political battlefield [Sexuality and Society; ties religion to interracial marriage to gay marriage]
6.The Standoff over interracial marriage [Kansas City Star]
7.It’s a matter of conscience [Neolib at Blogging Blue asks the inane question: ‘when will conservatives stand up to defend Bardwell’s right to refuse to marry interracial couples?’]
8.Louisiana JP refuses to do interracial marriage [Theology Web forum; claims the JP was a Democrat until 2008; not sourced or documented by the way as far as I could tell; reading these sites is painfully dull.]
9.Obama credited for opening door to acceptance of interracial marriage [Critical Narrative blog, self-classified as conservative.]
10.The Conservative Rules of Racism [from American Prospect/neolibs; basic conservative bashing]

Google is famous for the secretive algorithm that ranks top results for searches. But these results and a number of others I’ve received lately make the system even more perplexing.

Lately I’ve made it a point to search with Bing first, in part because I like the daily Bing photo of something unique from countries around the world and I like the click box that gives information about the photo. I also like the idea of competition. The Web is controlled right now by a single engine. I find that very troubling.

If you are a publisher, be sure to optimize your website for Bing in their webmaster tools section; for publishers, it’s easily the most uncomplicated of all the search engines.

Older search engines seem set in their ways, and often the results appear to fall along partisan lines. Conservative sites seem to have their work cut out for them in more ways than one. At present, few search engines, including Google, appear to recognize actual quality in content. Consider the fact the Huffington Post is often at the top of news search returns—a blog directory allegedly written largely by unpaid volunteers.

And at present, I’m still trying to figure out how an essay urging readers to accept the idea of equal rights when it comes to any kind of marriage was, if even temporarily, categorized as ‘conservatives against interracial marriage.’ Algorithm glitch or partisan politics?