Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Updated: June 7, 2018
by Lo
Editor, Dandelion Salad
June 6, 2018
Like many of the larger independent websites on the Left, Dandelion Salad’s blog posts have been removed from Google searches and Google Alerts.
So, please sign up for the free daily email newsletter. Don’t miss a new post: Click the Follow button.
Also, don’t rely on the Facebook Page for Dandelion Salad either, as Facebook does not show the new posts in your newsfeed unless you check the box to receive it “first”.
As always, thank you for sharing the posts on Dandelion Salad on social media. The new posts are receiving views because of all of our efforts. It’s the older ones that are not receiving views because they have been close to eliminated in the search engines.
Use OneSearch for your search needs.
Use Epic Privacy Browser.
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Updated: June 7, 2018
To be more clear (I’m not a very good writer), the censorship is for the blog posts on Dandelion Salad not the name of the blog. Most people are not searching for “Dandelion Salad”, they are searching for various topics and/or issues that the 21,543 blog posts have covered over the last 11 years.
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Socialism and the struggle against Censorship: Andre Damon at 2018 International Online May Day
WSWS on May 8, 2018
Andre Damon, World Socialist Web Site Address to the 2018 International Online May Day Rally, on May 5, 2018.
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Updated: July 23, 2018
Chris Hedges explains the algorithms in this excerpt:
“In addition to offering no evidence, PropOrNot never even disclosed who ran the website. Even so, its charge was used to justify the imposition of algorithms by Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon to direct traffic away from the targeted sites. These algorithms, or filters, overseen by thousands of “evaluators,” many hired from the military and security and surveillance apparatus, hunt for keywords such as “U.S. military,” “inequality” and “socialism,” along with personal names such as Julian Assange and Laura Poitras. These keywords are known as “impressions.” Before the imposition of the algorithms, a reader could type in the name Julian Assange and be directed to an article on one of these targeted sites. After the algorithms were put in place, these impressions directed readers only to mainstream sites such as The Washington Post. Referral traffic from these impressions at most of the targeted sites has plummeted, often by more than half. Challenged by these algorithms and the abolition of net neutrality, these sites will be pushed further and further to the outer reaches of the media.”
via The War on Assange Is a War on Press Freedom by Chris Hedges
From the archives:
Paul Street, Glen Ford, Chris Hedges, Bruce Dixon: Imagining an Authentic 21st Century U.S. Left (Left Forum 2018) (Both Hedges (46:24) and Dixon (1:05:04) mention the current censorship in their talks on this video.)
Red Alert: Don’t Let The Internet Turn Into Cable TV (Updated)
Chris Hedges and David North: Organizing Resistance To Internet Censorship
The Two-FacedBook by William Bowles
Censorship: The Death Knell of Democracy
Chris Hedges: RT Targeted for Giving Platform to Anti-Imperialist, Anti-Capitalist Critics
Dandelion Salad 
Pingback: Social media giants, “free speech,” and the control of information – Leftist Critic
No it’s not. I literally just Google searched for your site.
You have destroyed all credibility with this bullshit
Like I said before in other comments and in the updated portion of the post, this isn’t about searching for “Dandelion Salad”, it’s about people searching for various topics and issues that the over 21,540 posts here have covered. Those older blog posts are being eliminated or pushed so far down the list of pages that they are unseen.
Try searching for imperialism, antiwar, socialism, etc. and see how many of the Dandelion Salad posts show up.
Plus, I know the numbers of views I received from Google searches before “something” happened (late October, 2017 and Feb. 2018) and the number of views now. The views are down 90%. That is significant. Do you have a blog?
Not that long ago, when searching for “Dandelion Salad”, it was the very first link. Now, it’s the last one on the second page. BUT, most people are not searching for “Dandelion Salad”.
Another very telling circumstance here is that the Google browsing experience (like Amazon and many other companie0 is customized for the user based on their browzing habits. Everyone’s browzing display is to some extent unique.
For instance if I Google …Myanamar… I will tend to get hits on the genocide occurring there…not hits on tourism or ethnic cuisine.
As I fam a requent visitor to the dandelionsalad website I should get more hits on it than other sites due to my preferences particularly when I Google some search term that is significant to my DandelionSalad viewing habits. For instance the only time I have ever seen anything from Michael Parenti is on DandelionSalads….when I google him DS is not in the first 10 pages of results
Yes, good point, Dariel. Depending on if you don’t clear your cache and cookies often, Google will know it’s you and give you results for your preference.
I did some searches on other writers here, like Michael Parenti, and was surprised to not see their posts listed.
BTW—Clearing cache and cookies may only lead to a very short term anoniminity. I notice on Amazon that clearing cache/cookies lasts only for the first search or two…then the system recognizes my computer not only by ISP but by my unique software/hardware configuration related to the searches I make. I doubt that Google is less sophisticated methods.
I had to test this on Amazon repeatedly to try and find what the neutral browser setting was during searches.
They are all tracking us everywhere we go on the Internet.
I highly recommend using Epic Privacy browser. That is the only one I use for any searches and some websites that I use. I also clear cookies/cache very often and close down the browser and open it up again for other work. I recommend using the UK proxy.
It’s complicated. I noticed that such a search starts with a lot of things that are about him or relate to a body of his work. When I search for him on DS, I just get a list of his posts. Some other platforms will have pages about major contributors which tell about the contributor, and then providing the links to his posts. I suspect if DS did this that would make a real difference in the search results.
Google is continually changing its search algorithms. It seems to favor sites with the most hits (and DS can not compete with major mainstream media on that) and the most recent material (so if DS had a great post on a subject 6 months ago, searching the subject would probably bury it among more recent items from a variety of sources). I think Google has been making these factors more important in its searches, which would hurt DC in relation to big mainstream sites. I think the poorer showing is probably a result on changes in the algorithms, and not a specific targeting of DS.
Thanks, Bill.
“When I search for him on DS“, did you mean the search feature on my blog? That search feature will only search for posts on Dandelion Salad.
“Some other platforms will have pages about major contributors which tell about the contributor, and then providing the links to his posts. I suspect if DS did this that would make a real difference in the search results.” I really don’t know what you mean by this. The writers send me their articles/videos to post, and I do the publishing. Each writer doesn’t have the time to make the posts on the various sites that they send their latest work to. Most of “my” writers are sending their new pieces to multiple websites. And that does reduce the ranking but there’s not much I can do about that.
“I think the poorer showing is probably a result on changes in the algorithms, and not a specific targeting of DS.” I agree. I don’t think Dandelion Salad is being targeted specifically. This is happening to many blogs/websites.
I searched on Dandelion Salad for Michael Parenti to see whether you had an author page on him or just the posts. Apparently you have no author page. My suggestion is having author pages would improve your results on Google.
I have a Writers Page, a list of all the current and former writers on DS. It’s quite long now (156), after 11 years. When I first started I had a Books Page, on it was a list of the writers who had a book out. It also had a short bio of the author, and a link to buy the book. DS grew too fast and I couldn’t keep up with it so it’s been deleted.
It’s a great idea, but I don’t have the time to do it. Any volunteers? haha. Also, if I made an additional 156 Pages, I couldn’t easily display them. There are limitations to the free “theme” that I use on the free blog.
Right now I have 4 Pages listed on the right-hand sidebar. Having a list of 160 would be rather cumbersome.
It would be interesting to see the new policy of Google. Just because a policy is widely defined does not mean that it is de-facto discriminatory. Red-lining areas of cities to prevent mortgage lending may have been done on the basis of per-capita income but the effect was also racially discriminatory. In the case of internet censorship bias, the complaints from the radical left and the reactionary right are quite strong. Often where there is smoke there is fire. In this case there is lottsa smoke but the fire is difficult to see particularly in light of the individuation of the browser experience
Thanks, Dariel. I’m looking into this Google Search Console right now. Have you used it for Rivera’s website? I don’t know how to use it.
I use Startpage a European search engine and you are 5th in the first 10 listings. Apparently Martha Stewart and several others make dandelion salad for the 1-4 listings. That is an excellent rating for you 🙂
I use DuckDuckGo, first, then if I can’t find whatever I’m searching for I use StartPage.
Like I said before in other comments and in the updated portion of the post, this isn’t about searching for “Dandelion Salad”, it’s about people searching for various topics and issues that the over 21,540 posts here have covered. Those older blog posts are being eliminated or pushed so far down the list of pages that they are unseen.
Did you change your settings on your Google dashboard? You can decide how long u want Google to keep your data. From Google “GDPR. If you don’t engage with the controls to choose your own list, we will apply a commonly used list of ad technology providers…” It defaults to one year unless the setting is changed. You can set it to keep the data forever.
I don’t use Google except for the Feedburner subscription for the newsletter since Google bought out the first company that owned it. And I go to Youtube which is owned by Google. I deleted my Google profile page years ago. I guess it’s still there but it is empty. Also use some Google Alerts but not as many I used to use. That was one way I found out that Google was censoring the posts here as they were not showing up on one of the alerts I had even though in the past the new posts under that particular “alert” did show them.
And why would I want Google to keep my data forever?
I use Epic Privacy browser for almost everything I do on the Internet, and clear history, cookies, and cache often throughout the day and close the browser and open it again.
Also, that has nothing to do with this post’s topic of censorship of the blog posts.
I was referring to your blog articles when I used the word data. Google announced a year ago 100s of millions of web pages would be deleted from its search engine beginning this year. It has nothing to do with personal data.
I really can’t comment on that as I don’t know anything about what you wrote.
Dennis, I found the Google Search Console that you were writing about but I didn’t understand what it was. Google sent me an email back in early February this year, so I clicked the link and it took me to this “search console” where the blog is listed. What do I do now?
OK, I’m looking into this now. It’s called the Google Search Console. My blog is already listed and verified there. Is there something else to do? I did the “verify” thing when I first began blogging here in June, 2007.
WP has some info in their help section: https://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/
I made two screenshots from the Google Search Console, and don’t know what they mean. Something happened in late October 2017 and again February 2018.
This one states that Google excluded 5.22K:
Will get you a few links so you can change the settings.
Thank you so much, Dennis. I’m so sorry I misunderstood you before.
Apology for the delay. I’ve been fighting with Facebook over a 24 hour ban again. Use this link from the help system to add or update your search console. You need to be logged into your gmail account for this. More help is available on the bottom left hand corner. Need any further help let me know here not Facebook. https://search.google.com/search-console?utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=6155685
Thanks so much, Dennis, I’ll check it out and get back to you.
So sorry to hear about the Facebook ban. It’s getting ridiculous there. Do you use MeWe.com?
Yes, I found that the other day, that’s where I made the screenshots. Now that I am there, I really don’t know what to do. It gives me some information that’s interesting, but do I need to “do” something so the posts get a better ranking?
I have not forgotten you. This link will take you to the beginning of the search console help. Every website and most bloggers put a linked connection to several search engines at some point in time. Basically, Google’s search console (engine) is requesting an updated confirmation of the connection. You might also find that link in your WordPress settings. Here’s the link https://support.google.com/webmasters/?hl=en#topic=3309469
Thanks again for helping me out, Dennis.
I did connect with Google 11 years ago.
Here’s WP’s info: https://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/
So, you are saying that I have to reconnect to Google? WP says we don’t have to do this as they do it automatically for us. Not sure why this has to be so confusing. I guess I can do it again through Google Console.
OK, I did a “site” search and Google already has the blog in their index.
I did add a “sitemap” and “news.sitemap” to the Console because nothing was there. I did receive an error message on the “news” one, though.
The blog has received 10 views from Google search today as of 2 PM. I’ll check it later or tomorrow to see if there is any increase.
WordPress promote themselves while search engines pull the articles and keywords directly from your blog. Dig around the Google search console and look over the many settings. There is one, not sure where, that let’s you set a limit on how long Google should hold your articles. I picked the last one “forever” 🙂
I looked the other day for that setting and couldn’t find it. Will look again. Thanks so much, Dennis. 🙂 Cheers!
Lo, How did you create a sitemap?
Dariel, go to Google Console, find Sitemaps, then add “/sitemap.xml” to the end of the website address.
Updated: June 7, 2018
Added a brief note about the censorship of the blog posts, not the name of the blog.
And added a short video from the WSWS on socialism and censorship.
i google searched for “Rivera Sun” and the “Man From The North Rivera Sun”. Dandelion Salads has probably posted over 100 maybe 200 of Rivera’s articles over the years. In 18 pages of search results Dandelion Salads had one hit on Man from the North on page 7 of 8, and one on page 7 of the first 10 pages of Rivera Sun search returns. Likewise of the many hundreds of Rivera’s articles on Counterpunch, Truthout and Popular Resistance, only a few showed. Many small (and more mainstream) journals that have only published one or a few articles were represented.
When I google ‘Dandelion salads’ or ‘ Dandelion Salad blog ‘ I get 2 returns. For ‘Dandelion Salad political blog’ I get 6 returns. that’s nothing considering how much content you have.
Thanks for doing that, Dariel. One of the searches I did was for “The Man From the North” and was so surprised at not finding any on the first few pages of the search. And very disappointed.
Just published the 21,543rd blog post today! There are so many articles and videos on many different topics and/or issues over the almost 11 years of blogging.
Last year I had several older posts that would receive several views every single day and now it’s down to maybe 1 view or even less, no views at all.
Have you watched the video posted yesterday? https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/paul-street-glen-ford-chris-hedges-bruce-dixon-imagining-an-authentic-21st-century-u-s-left/ Both Hedges (46:24) and Dixon (1:05:04) mention the current censorship in their talks on that video. Since this has been going on at least since February or so this year, I thought I should make this post today.
It has already happened to much larger left-leaning websites, WSWS wrote about it last year. Here are some of their articles:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/27/goog-j27.html
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/28/pers-j28.html
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/29/goog-j29.html
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/31/goog-j31.html
And many, many more in their “Internet” archive:
http://www.wsws.org/en/topics/scienceCategory/sc-net/
That is a great video. I tweeted your link this morning.
How does meta data tagging work? Would it help for instance to tag each post with the authors name, general category and some very specific keyword. Rivera probably has over 1000 published instances of her work as many articles, radio shows are published multiple times in various publications (you always get Man From The North first) but most of the publications will only show 1 or 2 or 3 of the articles in a 10 page Google listing.
Even Rivera’s—– just a few of the articles show on the google search of her own blog
Thanks for sending out the link on Twitter, Dariel, always appreciated. 🙂
Every post is tagged with the author’s name and the various topics covered.
For example, the last MFTN I posted (actually a repost) has these categories and tags:
This entry was posted in Dandelion Salad Posts News Politics and-or Videos 2, Politics, Resistance, Revolution and tagged Civil Disobedience, Fiction, Nonviolence, Rivera Sun, The Man From the North, Tyranny.
Most all of Rivera’s articles you have published are in rotating carousels on Rivera and my Twitter accounts….you choose super illustrations to go with them that make the posts popular …Thank you. i also enjoy seeing the re-posts you bring out as they seem to be super gems…Thanks again…I retweet them also.
Thank you and Rivera so much for tweeting and retweeting the essays! I love the MFTN as well as Rivera’s other articles! And it works, too, as the posts are receiving views from Twitter.
Glad you like the photos I’ve found. All credit go to the wonderful photographers on Flickr who allow us bloggers to use their photos for free with a link back to their photos using a CC license.
Thanks for reblogging, flyingcuttlefish.
I just typed in Google search “Dandelion Salad Blog” and Dandelion Salad came right up as the first search result. I tried putting in some blog titles, and they came up anywhere from first result to nowhere in the first pages. So it does not look to me like you are correct about Google.
Yes, I am right about Google and other search engines.
Most people have not heard of Dandelion Salad, nor do they search for a complete title of a blog post. They are searching using a few words and the Dandelion Salad posts are not showing up.
I have a list of referrers to the blog. One is searches. The number of people coming from searches has been reduced considerably in the last few months. Like a 90% decrease, maybe more.
Today, I have received 7 views from Google. Yesterday was 13.
Only a few months ago it was in the hundreds.
Thanks for all of your work. Keep up the good fight.
Thank you, Jonathan. I’m continuing to post. It’s such a shame that when people interested in socialism, anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, anti-war, etc. are doing searches that the posts archived here won’t be showing up.
So, I am reposting older articles and videos. Also, posting links to older posts on my new posts.