Look it up on Google

"Look it up on Google" is a phrase repeated thousands of times a day in numerous different languages. And the data backs it up: According to the Statcounter statistics portal, Google is the preferred search engine of almost 90% of internet users, with that figure rising to over 95% in Spain. Experts put this success down to the fact that it draws on the largest internet catalogue in the world, with 40 million indexed pages, as well as its speed, ease of use and effective delivery of relevant results to the user. The diffusion of fake news, censorship of results in countries such as China and tracking of large amounts of personal data are at the top of the list of negatives that professionals in the field attribute to the search engine, which has become the supreme king of the internet.

Google’s freedom from competition is a reality that is difficult to refute. What other search engines are there on the internet? That is a question that most web users would find hard to answer, since Google more or less has the monopoly in terms of market share. Last April, 95.32% of the searches made by Spanish users were done through Google. The giant was followed, at a distance of light years, by Bing, with a share amounting to 3.27%; Yahoo, with 1.19% and DuckDuckGo, with a paltry 0.15%. And even more minuscule is the percentage of people using the search engines Yandex Ru and Baidu, both of which recorded a market share of 0.02%.

Since its foundation in 1997 and its popularisation in 1998, Google has gobbled up the lion’s share of the internet search pie. Prior to Google’s irruption onto the scene, it was a market shared by directories such as Yahoo and search engines such as Altavista, Lycos and WebCrawler. To provide some context, Altavista received more than 80 million visits every day in 1997. Google now receives 3.5 million requests for information per minute, according to a study published by Cumulus Media. "The competition has now all but evaporated and that also presents a number of risks", UOC Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences professor Alexandre López-Borrull explains. “The information that flows between Google and the user is bidirectional. The search engine gathers a lot of information about us from our searches", the professor adds.

In Spain, according to Google’s official blog, the ten most searched for terms last year were the following, in order of popularity: Catalonia, Barcelona attack, Bimba Bosé, Puigdemont, Ángel Nieto, Eurovision, HBO, Carme Chacón, iPhone8 and Despacito. And the top trending searches globally were: Hurricane Irma, iPhone 8, iPhone X, Matt Lauer, Meghan Markle, 13 Reasons Why, Tom Petty, Fidget Spinner, Chester Bennington, India National Cricket Team.

Núria Ferran Ferrer, also a professor at the UOC Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences, explains that, in terms of content, people mainly browse the internet for detailed content on how to do something, articles that respond to specific questions and content that does not have an expiration date.

In addition to its search engine, Google has also rolled out a wide range of other tools such as its map service (Google Maps), calendar service (Google Calendar), cloud files (Google Drive)... The most recent innovation being developed by the brand is Duplex, the Google AI assistant that will be able to make phone calls for you by itself. A neutral voice will, for example, be able to call a restaurant and book you a table. "Google is improving itself. In terms of the Western world it is a step ahead", says López-Borrull.

Encyclopaedias, relegated to decorative objects

Where did we go to find information before the internet existed? In many households physical dictionaries and encyclopaedias have now ended up as mere decorative objects that adorn the shelves. Which of us can remember the last time we opened the door to an encyclopaedia salesman? And what of the archivists and documentalists who supplied information to media journalists?

Digital dictionaries and encyclopaedias and the luxury of information being just a click away have killed off the old information systems. And the more recent ones too. Many internet users no longer obtain their information through traditional media channels (press, radio or TV). The experts have for some time now been warning of a new, unprecedented trend: people are increasingly getting their information from search engines and social media.

A survey by the Pew Research Center reveals that almost 75% of Americans use social media as a source of information.  According to this article, channels such as Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat have seen a significant increase in the proportion of users that go to them for news.  UOC Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences professor Núria Ferran confirms that there has been a significant shift in terms of "information behaviour", in the way we seek and consume information and the act of sharing it via social media. Ferran also adds that, in many cases, news is being accessed through social media surfing.

The expert points to a study carried out among young people in which the participants confirmed that although they read the press in digital format on a daily basis, they could not identify the news sources the information came from. That is because, explains Núria Ferran, users now access news sites through social media platforms and are unaware of their original journalistic sources. "The media no longer have the influence they used to in terms of seeking evidence of credibility, which is transferred to the mediator positioned between the source and the reader", the expert points out.

The types of content that work best on social media are those which provoke emotional responses and deal with trending topics. Content that includes engaging visual media and is accompanied by eye-catching titles are also a big hit. Factors that ensure the likes and shares come rolling in.

Channels that propagate the distribution of fake news

The online distribution of fake news is one of the major problems associated with search engines such as Google and the social media networks; a phenomenon which, in many cases, is very difficult to detect. A study published in Science magazine points out that this type of information is 70% more likely to be diffused than articles that are true. According to the report, while real news rarely reached more than 1,000 people, false content reached more than 10,000 Twitter users. This is a fact that puts pressure on the relevant platforms to identify this type of content as quickly as possible. Professor López-Borrull highlights the responsibility of Google and the social media networks in terms of detecting this type of information that quickly goes viral. Google – he explains – is developing tools to make it easier to filter information, not only from a technological point of view but also involving user participation in order to be able to detect this type of information and warn you in the event it has been identified. It also offers users tips on how to spot this type of information. A significant challenge for information professionals. "As we used to teach people to be discerning about the neutrality of dictionaries or encyclopaedias, we now need to apply the same kind of distinction to information so that people are able to discern whether information is true or false", the professor stresses.

The enormous range of media sources that exist means that this process of analysis is no simple matter. "In the past, we were familiar with the traditional media sources available to us but these days it’s possible for people to visit a web page that looks like a media site without realising that it actually publishes parodies of the news".