Santorum Search Results
On researching the Republican presidential hopefuls Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, you might be surprised with some of the top search engine results. With over half of the clicks on Google going to the top ten websites, these anomalous results have given their past indiscretions an incredibly public airing.
In 2003, Santorum’s hostile anti-gay comments drove columnist Dan Savage to found the ‘Spreading Santorum’ site which redefined his name as ‘the frothy mixture of lube and faecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.’ The site rocketed up the Google rankings, at one point even topping the list. Now that Santorum is a potential U.S. presidential candidate, this site has even outranked his own campaign pages.
Romney’s equivalent site sprang up in early 2012, and has ranked consistently on the first page of Google. Referencing an incident in 1983 where Romney left his dog in a rooftop carrier for a twelve hour drive, the site defines his name as ‘to defecate in terror’; presumably the dog’s reaction to this treatment.
There have been similar past instances of this. In 2003, a ‘Google Bomb’ manipulated the search engine’s algorithms and caused President George Bush’s biography to be the top result for ‘miserable failure.’ This was removed by Google, but with Romney and Santorum there are different considerations. In particular, the Santorum page is relevant to the candidate, even if it’s an opposition site.
Google has encountered criticism for leaving the Romney and Santorum sites up; are these pages really as relevant to the candidates as their official campaign pages? Though the answer is probably no, there are the inevitable first amendment arguments which are always tricky for search engines to deal with.
Even if the comments made by Santorum are nearing decade old, they are proving impossible to bury for the presidential hopeful. However, Spreading Santorum founder Savage has offered him a deal; ‘If Rick Santorum wants to make a $5 million donation to [the gay marriage group] Freedom to Marry, I will take it down. Interest starts accruing now.’
Perhaps this is something he should consider.
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