The company Google has officially announced on its blog that it has introduced changes to its search algorithm. One of the objectives of these changes is to improve the treatment of languages. In a tweet, the California-based company has thanked the collaboration it has received from the Alliance for the Digital Presence of Catalan. It is a platform promoted by the Government of the Generalitat and in which various civil society institutions are integrated.
During the spring of 2022, a change in the trend began in Internet searches: Catalan had disappeared from the top positions of search engines, despite the fact that the search had been carried out in Catalan and although the browsing environment was configured by give preference to this language. It was not a perception. At the request of the Fundació .cat, organizations and entities that manage multi-language websites (including Catalan) provided information on their web traffic. These data were analyzed by a specific team led by Albert Cuesta and Pep Masoliver. It was possible to certify a change in the trend of the traffic contributed from the Google search engine. The conclusion was that search engines had stopped respecting users’ language preferences.
In mid-January 2023, a campaign was launched on the networks denouncing that Google marginalized Catalan. On January 25, the company responded to the campaign. They affirmed that they had not introduced any changes that would modify the search system by language and acquired a commitment to the users who had protested: “We understand the concern of those who search for results in a specific language. It is one of our priorities and we continue to investigate solutions although it takes time to make sure they work perfectly.” During this period, the Alliance continued to analyze data and in June published the Report on the loss of visibility of Catalan-language content in web search results. Following the publication of the report, the Alliance entered into a discreet technical dialogue with the engineering departments of Google and Microsoft. The interest of both parties was shared: “resolving a malfunction that affected more languages and cultures in the world, but no one had defined or quantified”.
These solutions could begin to be verified this August. Nor was it a perception. The visibility of web content in Catalan improved substantially. It has been thanks to the changes and improvements of the algorithm, as explained by Google in its statement. The news was celebrated by the Minister of Business, Roger Torrent, and the Minister of Culture, Natàlia Garriga. When assessing the changes introduced by the North American company, Genís Roca, president of the .cat Foundation, underlined the efficiency that civil society entities have shown “in solving a specific, extremely complex problem.” If a year ago, you searched for “Mercè Rodoreda” or “FC Barcelona”, despite having the language options set to Catalan, the browser would take you to the page in Spanish before. That mechanic is what Google has found the formula to modify.
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