Searches for the words “born alive” are way, way up:
Google Trends: Born Alive
In case you’re wondering, no, “born alive” is not the name of a suddenly-popular Motown song. It’s the name of Illinois and federal legislation that Barack Obama didn’t vote for, and the pro-life blogosphere is going ballistic about it.
The top search results on Google for the term are dominated by pro-life websites (intermingled with lyrics of the snappy Patrick Hernandez single from the 70s). Here is an excellent example of something I like to call search results balkanization.
What is search results balkanization? When you search for a term that is only used by a specific political subculture, then results within Google will only be websites with that particular political stance. And naturally, folks within that same political group will use that term when searching, and will have their worldviews reinforced by those very same websites, all filled with beliefs that match their own. The result? A world full of people living in closed bubbles, never being exposed to arguments or beliefs that do not match their own.
The abortion debate seems particularly rife with such terminology. Words like “abortionist” and “partial birth” are primarily used by people on only one side of the issue.
My advice to Obama: you already have a page on your website that talks about the Born Alive legislation, using the exact terminology that the right-wing bloggers are using, and that’s great. But you didn’t take the simple step of putting the term “born alive” in the HTML page title - and that would go a long way toward improving your search engine ranks for this term. Lastly - watch out for trojan horses like this one, a community blog on my.barackobama.com that appears to be an back-handed attack on the candidate.
Five years ago, when the war in Iraq was beginning and I had no grey hairs whatsoever, I was fascinated by the differences between search results for “war in iraq” compared to “war on iraq.” Can you guess that “war on iraq” showed search engine results that were primarily anti-war, while “war in iraq” were sites largely supporting the war.
Can you think of any examples from your own experience?
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