Friday, August 02, 2013

Is the Tea Party still an activist reality in Minnesota?

I saw a link to the Central Minnesota Tea Party Blog, which publishes online here. It made me wonder how much Tea Party publishing remained active in Minnesota, and how to guage it.

I did two Googles, and interestingly, the second, Minnesota specific, on the first page of hits did not identify the Central Minnesota Tea Party Blog as a hit despite three of the search words in its title. It did list (several hits down from the top), this link.

Here is my first Google; while my second Minnesota-specific one is here. This screen capture of the second search, first page returns:

click the image to enlarge and read

Note: the green/red shielding and "tracked" notation is an artifact of using the Google Privacy addon in the Pale Moon browser (a variant of Firefox).

What do you make of it? Tea Party having a setting sun? Or other reasons? Cogent on-point reader comments are welcome. The Googling gives an impression that Tea Party zealots have fallen off the edge of their earth.

I do know that Google does provide profile specific search returns, with that a possible explanation where those in Tea Party activities and associations might get a different return list from mine. Duck Duck Go claims (see also, this link) to avoid any profiling-pitfalls, so I tried the same two searches on it.

Here, generic. Here, Minnesota specific. This screen shot of the latter search top first page returns.


Try the experiment yourself, where, if representations are true you should get the same Duck Duck Go result as in that screen shot, but different return listings in Googling because your profile differs from mine. Last thought, the Google Privacy addon is fairly new, so that Google had an extensive profile of me already before I installed it, and I do use other browsers (where that privacy addon is not available).

Not fully profiled, but profiled nonetheless. So, Google is like Norm Coleman, tell them what they want to hear?