Jaymar,

thank you so much for letting us aware of this and thank you for doing something to change it. We may not be able to stop mail order brides but i wouldnt want other people not knowing what a filipina really is and what great jobs we have accomplished once they google about us. Its simply about giving them the right information using this technology.

Thank you!

… i just stumbled upon your website and i love your videos… looking forward to seeing more!

H.

Thank, Honey. That’s what it’s all about. By the way, Sweet name!…

…

Get it??!?! =)

Jaymar

thank you so much for letting us aware of this and thank you for doing something to change it. We may not be able to stop mail order brides but i wouldnt want other people not knowing what a filipina really is and what great jobs we have accomplished once they google about us. Its simply about giving them the right information using this technology.

Thank you!

… i just stumbled upon your website and i love your videos… looking forward to seeing more!

H.

just thought i’d put it out there.

On May 13, 2007 at 2:39 pm, Rene Gube said

On May 13, 2007 at 2:16 pm, whyxhello said

I’M SO INDESCRIBABLY UPSET.

looking up “Filipino people” in wikipedia, i found:
There is also a significant population of Filipinos in Canada.

what’s up with that?

i’m sorry. why is this upsetting to you?

i’ll take a stab at this confusion, WHYXHELLO was upset that the search results came up with mail order brides. As an aside, he/she thought it was interesting that so many Filipinos live in Canada.

and as i discuss in my post below, i hope that she/he is upset that so many sites exist and that people can be and allow themselves to be treated this way. i hope he/she is not one of those silly people who think that Google is trying to be evil. Google has no idea what their search results will be, and its naive bordering on utter stupidity to think that Google is responsible for what is on the net. when you hit search on Google, youre saying “tell me what is most popular on the net for these words” not, “read my mind.”

If WHYXHELLO or anyone else knows a better way to return results which doesn’t involve combing the internet by hand, let me know. i would love to start that company. i really believe that companies like Yahoo! are leading the way in content editing and tailoring the internet to its users. For example, Google news doesnt know about news once the internet does (when its bots crawl across it), but Yahoo! knows the news as soon as it hits and brings it to us and the internet, because it has real people and real relationships with news agencies editing and scouting the real world for news.

again, i have gone on a tangent.

i do agree that those results are not helpful or relevant to us. But clearly they are to some brides and grooms to be, and your battle really starts with them.

I’m as puzzled as you are about why he/she is upset… but I don’t think his/her issue has anything to do with search engines or Google, or even internet technology. It seems like he/she is just referring to a specific sentence in a specific article on Wikipedia. My two cents.

Good job, i think i see a change starting in the search results. Additionally, you should try to see if you can get people to stop selling one another or selling a piece of their soul for citizenship. Maybe this goes further than you thought. Maybe the real problem doesn’t center around search results, but is really a symptom of a bigger problem. Why do Filipinas participate in this? After all, when i search for Latinas, no such results. A porn site or two, which might have something to do with the gender description? If i search for Germans, i dont have a word for girl German ya know? But i digress, i hypothesize that a gorgeous paradise like the Philippines must have some corruption, poverty, and/or human rights issues that need to be addressed if women can be ordered through the mail. That, or maybe there are some enormous mosquitoes. Even so, these issues could be more significant than spamming search results. Either way, i just think its fair to care a little more about the issue that googles webcrawlers have shown you than it is to just mask it with a bunch of irrelevant sites. Covering up the issue, doesn’t fix it. im not saying i have any great solution in mind, but i just caution against a false sense of accomplishment on this issue by making your world look or feel more “appropriate.” I welcome your thoughts and admit upfront that maybe missing something here. Thanks, luke. lukedavidjohnson@gmail.com

Let me thank you, Luke, for opening up some discussion on this topic (and others). I’m honestly glad that you took a minute to read the article, and I really appreciate your input. Constructive dialogue is always valuable.

That said, first off, I think it’s a little pretentious of you to recommend that I “get people to stop selling one another or selling a piece of their soul for citizenship.” It seems as if you’re putting all the blame on the Filipina. Maybe this problem goes further than YOU thought, my friend. You said it yourself, corruption, poverty, and human rights issues in the Philippines need to be addressed. I completely agree. However, I think you’re failing to see that certain practices (the mail-order-bride phenomenon) that you blame on the Filipina, may actually be rooted in the entire socio-political-economic infrastructure of the world as well. But here’s the thing… we don’t have to get into all that…

You know why? Because that is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ISSUE. I think you may have missed the entire purpose of this article. This Googlebomb isn’t an effort to fix the issue of the mail-order-bride phenomenon, nor is it supposed to have any implications on society in the Philippines at all. It has a single purpose, and that is to change the misrepresentation of Filipinas on the the net.

And you want to “caution [me] against a false sense of accomplishment on this issue?” I’m sorry Luke, but not only is this first step a worthwhile accomplishment to ME, but just as well, it is worthwhile to thousands of young Filipinas, for example, who may have to write a report on their heritage for school using Google as a research tool.

And no, I don’t think Google is evil. I understand the technology that drives search results… and there’s no way I can blame their algorithm for any injustice. I’m just trying to make sure that the mail-order-bride sites out there aren’t the ONLY ones offering any content on Filipinas. If that’s the case, then it’s as much our fault as it is theirs. So you see, this isn’t an attempt to “mask [the problem] with irrelevant sites.” In fact, I believe we’re pushing the MORE relevant sites to the forefront. What was it that skewed your perspective so much that you consider these links “irrelevant”? Perhaps you just Googled the word “Filipina”.

Thanks, Jaymar.

Google has lawsuits about everything from this issue to accusing people of being gay. way to go Yahoo! (for the record, i am no longer a huge fan of either engine, i am an ex-Google fan for tons of reasons)

yahoosearch for Filipina

and ps, i meant Google news “only knows” not “doesnt know” (in my 9:58 AM post)