When Vanity Searches Go Wrong
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James Joyner | Wednesday, April 8, 2009 |
As is increasingly common, I have a handful of “vanity searches” set up wherein results for those terms are sent to me via Google. One of those terms is “Atlantic Council,” since I manage their Web presence and want to know as soon as possible what’s being said about us online.
Quite frequently, that particular search yields false positives, particularly because there are other Atlantic Councils other than the Atlantic Council of the United States and because of NATO’s North Atlantic Council.* Few, however, match up to this one:
The good news is pouring in, said Andrew Sullivan in The Atlantic. Council leaders in Washington, DC, also just voted to recognize same-sex marriages …
It refers to a story in The Week on Vermont legalizing gay marriage and the “Council leaders” refer to those of the DC City Council, not the Atlantic Council. So far as I know, while most of my colleagues likely support the idea of legalizing gay marriage, we’re taking no official stance on the matter as an organization. If we did, however, it would involve a transatlantic approach.
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*I could probably tweak the algorithm to eliminate most of these but I don’t want to risk missing legitimate mentions.
Photo by Flickr user Will Lion, used under Creative Commons license.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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