Search Engine Optimization and the Tara Reade "allegations"

[DonaldsRump]

I'm no expert in search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, but I usually use Google News as my primary news aggregator. Not more than 30 minutes ago, the Tara Reade nonsense was the top story, at least in my Google US News. Fox News, the NY Post, and the Washington Examiner (surprise, surprise) seemed to be the top publications of this (alleged) top story. Now, magically, 30 minutes later, it is no longer mentioned in Google News.

I also see this at night US time, when the Tara Reade "story" seems to be the top Google News story at night. However, when Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones are all in daylight, the story magically disappears or gets relegated to a lower position.

It is obvious that (a) Tara Reade; (b) Hunter Biden; (c) Joe's "senility" (ROTFLMAO); and (d) Trump's claiming to be responsible for all the money flowing to people in the US are the chief prongs of the Republican/Trump campaign, along with voter suppression.

At least for the first one (Tara Reade), does anyone with knowledge of SEO understand how these results are so wildly fluctuating? I would think Brad Parscale's efforts are somehow involved in this apparent manipulation, trying to make this into a mainstream story.

[ck4829]

1. We're a site and some of us are activists... can someone show us how this works?

We can do some optimization right back if this is the case.

[Budi]

2. What time is it in Russia when it hits the top headlines here?

Just curious

[DonaldsRump]

3. Russia is 7 hours ahead of EDT and 10 hours ahead of PDT n/t

[GriffenRamsey]

4. I agree, check to see if this is on Moscow time.

[Tennessee Hillbilly]

5. Temporarily boosting a news story ...

to the top of google's search results would require a very big well-organized effort, including a lot of prior work in setting everything up.

I have six websites, all of them at least ten years old, and have spent some time studying SEO. In recent years, because of Google's counter-measures against attempts at manipulation, SEO has become a very complex and difficult subject. Only a very big well-organized effort would be able to achieve what the OP described.

[Sloumeau]

6. If you have enough money, and put in a little effort, you can make certain news stories pop.

First, keep in mind that Google listings can include advertisements right at the top. When you buy an ad from Google, you can choose, among other things, what time of day it shows up. Google might be giving cheaper rates for nighttime ad placement. If enough people click on a "news story" as part of Google ad, and then enough people link to it, sooner or later, it will end up as part of Google's regular listings outside of the ad area. Remember, the Google system outside the ads is automatic. All the automated system cares about is how many people visit a web page, and how many people link to that web page. Get more people to link to a certain page, and it can pop on Google.

So, let's say you are Brad Pascarle--Trump's Campaign Manager and Digital Media Guy. You want something like the Tara Reade story to get lots of hits, day after day. You can pay for ads directly on search engines like Google and only have those ads run at night to save money. You can also do what Pascale did in 2016--place ads for news stories on places like Facebook, and then see who clicks on the ads. They did this in 2016. They had a bunch of ads about stories, each slightly changed, and Facebook kept track of which ads got the most clicks. Facebook's system then automatically increased the number of ad views for the ads that were clicked on more often and reduced the number of ad views for the less successful ads. It is a quick way to find out which wording works best, and which images work best.

[Tennessee Hillbilly]

7. That could work, but ...

it would probably take thousands of clicks on the ad to get a significant rankings boost, and that would be very expensive on Google even at night-time rates. Facebook ads are much cheaper, so that would be the way to go.

Also, before an ad can be shown on Google, it has to be manually reviewed and approved, and that can take a day or more. Google rejects a lot of ads, and their policies for political ads are particularly strict. It's much easier to get an ad approved on Facebook.

I suspect that re-directs would need to be used as well, to try to prevent Google's algorithm from detecting that the clicks are coming from an ad. Google's ad policies forbid re-directs, but I don't know about Facebook.