By Edgar Wilson – I wrote before that Google’s search algorithm
didn’t play politics — facts spoke for themselves, and searcher/voter intent determined the results they found.
That, unfortunately, is no longer the case.
The world’s
most popular search engine has announced that a
new, experimental feature will give presidential candidates (Republicans and Democrats only) a way to feature their own images, and up to 14,400 characters of their own text, at the top of relevant searches.
Similar to how a search for, say, a celebrity will yield a
Knowledge Graph above all other organic results (typically a Wikipedia page), featuring images, biographical information, and related links, the idea is to bring voters directly to the candidates they are searching for with real-time updates.
These Candidate Cards will not be drawn from other popular search results, as the current Knowledge Graphs are; rather, they will be taken from the candidates themselves. That means they will determine independently what the primary search results for their names look and sound like.
