Last week, I wanted to get a bit more information about the vote in Alabama and have always had good success by starting with a Google search so did a simple search for “alabama vote.” I saw three suggested results but surprisingly the first one was a link to Breitbart.

Search for alabama vote on 2017-12-05

I ran the same search a few days ago and saw that the first link was to yet another Breitbart article.

Search for alabama vote on 2017-12-09

Finally when I repeated the search the past two days Breitbart was out and I saw legitimate news publishers.

Search for alabama vote on 2017-12-10

Search for alabama vote on 2017-12-11

Now I realize that it’s tough to do recommendations right but it’s still shocking that Google wouldn’t even prioritize the most recent news results ahead of something clearly misleading. The sad truth is that the linkbaity articles are more engaging than real news but it’s disappointing that Google is prioritizing user engagement and clicks over quality. I’ve been trying to make myself less and less reliant on Google and examples like this give me more and more reason to do so.