Is Google Censoring The Asylum?

My day job is web development. I’m a one-man show and started my business in 2006. Though Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not my speciality (I mainly program and maintain websites) I have learned a fair amount about it because of some of my personal projects (including The Asylum) and because some of my clients will hire me to help them because they trust me and don’t want to pay a SEO expert.

The Asylum’s web traffic has been increasing (thanks!), it’s nothing earth shattering, but still I am a little surprised at the traffic after starting the site in December of 2021. The subject matter here is very focused: it’s conservative, it’s MAGA. The site has kind of morphed into an emphasis on the jab, mandates, etc, but I also mention the stolen election, Russia/Ukraine and a few other things that might be in the news. The Asylum is not Google’s sweetheart.

I started using Google when it was in its infancy and the alternative search engine on the internet. It was cool to use Google back then. My how things change.

Google market share among search engines worldwide is over 90%. In North America it’s at about 89%. Here’s how the market share among the top search engines is distributed in North America:

1. Google / 88.93%
2. Bing / 5.87%
3. Yahoo! / 2.77%
4. DuckDuckGo / 2.1%

Those are the big four. You would think that most of The Asylum’s search engine traffic would come from Google. Here’s how it plays out on The Asylum over three months based on number of users.

January 1 – March 23 2022
The Asylum Traffic via Search Engines

1. DuckDuckGo / 1,381 / 67.2%
2. Bing / 408 / 19.9 %
3. Yahoo / 171 / 8.3%
4. Google / 93 / 4.5%

Note the percentages. You would think that Google would be the top, or at least number two, but not the bottom. One could argue that conservatives use DuckDuckgo and not Google. I don’t know the percentages on that, but still I would think Google would be winning here. Even I, The Inmate, at times, use Google.

January 1 – March 23 2022
Other Website Traffic via Search Engines

Here’s another site I work on during the same period with about half the traffic. This site has no politics whatsoever on it.

1. Google / 609 / 93%
2. Baidu / 29 / 4.4%
3. Sogou / 11 /1.7%
4. Bing / 6 /0.9%

And for good measure here’s another one that has only one political post among hundreds of others:

1. Google / 1,169 / 85%
2. Bing / 121 / 8.8%
3. DuckDuckGo / 50 /3.6%
4. Yahoo / 30 / 2.1%

I know this is not definitive, but it does appear that Google is censoring The Asylum. It’s not something I didn’t expect. In fact, I wondered how hard it would be to get traffic if Google was censoring the site. Over half my traffic is not from search engines at this point, but it is search engines that will put you on the map if you are not actively advertising. I’ve done no advertising.

Censored by Google. I guess that means The Asylum is over the target.

I’m so proud.