In closed-door meetings of the ominous-sounding "Google Publishers Advisory Council," executives from struggling old media like the New York Times, Time Inc., The Wall Street Journal and Hearst are pressing their case: They want their content to get higher sort rank in Google search results.

Those results are determined, at the most fundamental level, by Google's famed PageRank algorithm, which weighs Web pages based on how many other pages link to them, and based on the rank of those linking pages. So the newspapers and magazines are basically whining they don't get enough links, and/or don't know how to structure their content in in the simple and straightforward manner Google prefers.

In fact Martin Nisenholtz (pictured), despite an astonishing 14 years atop the Times website, still hasn't figured out how to get his articles to show up in many Google search results. This frustrates him to no end.

Why, just the other day, according to Ad Age, Nisenholtz Googled "Gaza" and got back "outdated" BBC stories, results from something called a "Wikipedia" and a YouTube video he says was anti-Semitic. Which is shocking, but only because Nisenholtz should realize after 10+ years that Google is not a breaking-news search engine. A search for "Gaza" shouldn't bring up the latest news on the Gaza Strip any more than a search for "New York" would bring up the latest front-page Gotham murder.

(Maybe he should fix nytimes.com's search engine before complaining about Google. It falsely claims to have published more than 10,000 articles on Gaza in the past month, and presents them in an unsortable mush riddled with duplicates.)

You know people are getting delusional/megalomaniacal when Michael Wolff is the most reasonable-sounding of the bunch:

"It's the plaintive cry of people who have lost their monopoly trying to scrounge a little of it back," said Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair columnist and founder of Newser, which aggregates and links news from around the web. "Sometimes it's true that you'd rather get what The New York Times has to say about something rather than a host of bloggers. But more interestingly it's not always true. And it is in fact less and less true."

We just had a newspaper editor lobby in Washington to bend antitrust law; now we find out publishers are convening secret meetings with Google to twist search results. If the mass media are going to be so obvious in their self-serving flackery, people just might get the idea they're more interested in self preservation than in their supposed civic contribution: standing up for the little guy. Imagine that.

[Ad Age]

(Photo: Teresa Boardman on Flickr)

• Hide behind anonymity: For chrissake, the Grand Old Party isn't about transparency, it's about shady dirty tricks organizations like C.R.E.E.P. and Vietnam Veterans for Truth! (The only thing different about the Democrats is that they haven't been caught (yet), and don't pick names that are nearly as catchy). The rules: Don't let your campaign staffers hold social network accounts in their own names unless they're doing nothing but disseminating thoroughly vetted talking points. Use online anonymity to your advantage. Create fake "sock puppet" accounts, and lots of 'em. There are certainly security consultants mercenary enough to teach you the finer points of spoofing IP addresses, emails and phone numbers to protect your schemes from being discovered.
• Think alternate reality, not astroturfing: If you're going to game the Web to literally scare up votes, you need to start thinking like Alternate Reality Game (ARG) designers. Hire an army of twentysomethings to create an even larger army of fake Americans across the country and the demographic spectrum. Give them back stories with linked accounts on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, et al. The next step: figuring out their artfully fakes stance.
• Moderate, not extremist: This army of sock puppets should all be moderate voters who claim to be undecided. Republicans already have the overtly racist right-wing extremist vote, and they're already blogging. What the GOP needs is moderate voices who will subtly tip voters in your direction by doing things like expressing fears about neighborhood safety while linking to local news reports of violent crimes which just happen to be committed by immigrants and people of color. Use nuance when pointing to the other party's extremist element by also linking to more reasoned articles criticising your opponent as a centrist.
• Engage with the online audience: Once you've assembled hundreds of fleshed-out fakesters, start weighing in on debates — everywhere from blog comments to Wikipedia. And have your virtual voters pretend to fight amongst themselves over policy points. Only then do you use your real soldiers to weigh in with a reasonable compromise that agrees with party policy. A few fake Democrats who turn the debate in a less-than-civil direction might be handy to gain sympathy for your argument, but you can probably count on the Kossacks — fans of DailyKos — to do that work for you.

Yes, this is all incredibly evil. If your party isn't doing it you can bet the other party is.