WEBVTT - Search Results and Swaying Elections 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:15.600 Forward Thinking. Hey everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:18.600 podcast that looks at the future and says I swung 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:22.480 the election. Friends, that's no small order. I'm Jonathan Strickland 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:26.080 and I'm Joe McCormick, and I have a question for you, guys. 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:33.760 Have you ever googled yourself to be met with horror? 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:38.239 Not because of something that you did that's chronicled on 0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:41.800 the Internet in an embarrassing way, but because somebody has 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:45.080 the same name as you, and they're higher in Google 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:49.080 results than you are, and they do something that you 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:53.680 don't necessarily want people thinking that you do. It is 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:57.680 very difficult for me to answer this question, uh, without 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:01.920 putting my own person philosophy on the line. I'll just 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:06.680 say yes, uh, speaking as from what I can tell, 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:10.040 the one end only Lauren Vogel baumb on this planet. 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:13.760 That's a lucky condition. Yeah, I actually don't know how 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:15.920 that feels. Well, there's somebody with the same name as 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:19.120 me who's some kind of erotic photographer. Well, let me 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:24.480 just say this. There is a certain conservative senator from 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:27.360 Texas who probably is irritated that he has the same 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:30.399 name that I do. Really like he's tired of getting 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:33.360 emails about how this new app wor let me say, actually, 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:36.200 I say Senator. I think he's the State House of Representatives, 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:38.280 so I believe I misspoke. But yes, there is a 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:40.880 politician in Texas who has the same name as I do, 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:46.760 and I'm sure he is endlessly irritated by my tweets, etcetera. 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:50.640 Why are people asking me how Mulnier works? How do 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:56.640 you say that mull mullner? Okay, well, this is going 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:58.880 to be related to the topic that we're going to 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:03.040 talk about today, which is Google rankings, or i'd say 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:07.400 more broadly search rankings. Though let's be honest, what we're 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:10.919 really talking about is Google the United States. Sure, sure, 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:13.519 we read this really good article in Wired by one 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:18.520 Adam Rogers. It's called Google Search Algorithm could Steal the Presidency, 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:22.000 and we found it so interesting because in it, Rogers 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:26.480 introduces a concept that he calls Google mandering. Yeah what 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:32.840 google mandering? As in Google mandering and an spirit of 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:35.639 Google has appeared with us here in the requests. I 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:39.200 thought it was an introductory class at Hogwarts. You know, 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:42.320 you had your herbology and google mandering. No, no, but 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:46.160 based on jerrymandering, which of course is the practice of 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:50.639 rigging a election populations to get the results that you're 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:53.840 looking for. Right, So, maybe if you have a lot 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:56.760 of people who you're expecting to vote against your party, 0:02:57.120 --> 0:03:00.600 you can just safely confine them all to one weirdly 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:03.960 shaped district so they're not going to be threatening to 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:07.760 vote in your district. Yeah. The the basic idea here 0:03:08.120 --> 0:03:11.560 is that the way that search results could be displayed 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:17.760 might influence someone's decision on an important film thing like 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:22.160 who to vote for in an election. What that's so crazy, 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:26.360 you guys. Google surely cannot influence something so personal is 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:31.760 voting decisions, or something so complex as election results. Right. Well, 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:34.720 so here we're gonna get into something that is sort 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:40.760 of a requires some standing back and analyzing the way 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:43.920 media affects our perception. Now, the way media affects our 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:47.400 voting is pretty obvious in one sense, as in, you 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:50.720 can read articles, or watch television or get any other 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:53.600 kinds of sources of entertainment or information that tend to 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:57.360 favor one side of a debate debate over the other side. 0:03:58.000 --> 0:03:59.960 But there's a different way that your media can affect 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.840 to your decisions, and it can be at the level 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:07.160 above that, not just that you're looking at one article 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:10.800 and it and it consistently favors one side over another, 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:17.159 but in the selection or availability of sources available to you. Yeah. 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:20.000 So in other words, uh, I mean, well, let's put 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:22.320 to it a a very simple way. If you lived in 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:30.760 a very remote location and only one newspaper ever arrived, 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:35.600 and that newspaper had a very specific slant political slant, 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:38.640 and that's all the information you get, it would be 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:41.560 very difficult for you to make an unbiased decision if 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:46.000 you can only get the anarchist world news today, in 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:50.039 which case you probably just don't vote, but but you 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:53.960 don't vote with authority. But yeah, that's that's a that's 0:04:54.000 --> 0:04:57.599 an example. So now, when we talk about the the 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:01.120 use of online sources and also just just the various 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:04.679 media sources that are out there, we're not necessarily boiling 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:07.360 it down to something that's simplistic, but the point being 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:10.279 that when you get one of these influential voices to 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:14.160 come into an area, there appears to be a measurable 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:17.640 impact to that. Yeah, and that's not you don't have 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:20.839 to take our word for it. Um, there's uh, there 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:26.280 is a actual phenomenon called the Fox News effect. Well no, okay, 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:28.359 So to be clear, we're not going to be taking 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:31.080 a political stance one way or another. This is about 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:35.640 the measurable effects of media availability in surgeons. Yes, yes, 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:38.440 uh so. The Fox News channel, as you may may 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:43.080 not know, started up in October, wherein it joined other 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:46.800 twenty four hour cable news channels like CNN and MSNBC. 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:51.680 And you know, okay that the channel has long maintained 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:56.080 to have no bias towards anything other than fairness. Um, 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:59.880 but it's always been on the conservative side of fairness. Yeah, 0:05:59.880 --> 0:06:02.880 I think everybody is aware of this. Different channels tend 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:05.480 to have different political leanings. You can, I can expect 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:08.440 MSNBC to be more to the left, you can expect 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:11.240 Fox News to be more to the right. Sure. So 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:14.960 it was introduced into the cable packages of some likewent 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:20.200 of towns in the United States between November of two thousand, 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.520 which was the year of the Bush versus Gore versus 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:28.039 Ralph Nader kind of sort of presidential election, and a 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.400 group from the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:35.719 this nonprofit and hypothetically nonpartisan organization that studies the economy 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:40.080 and politics saw in this an opportunity for learning specifically 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:43.360 about media bias and putting some numbers into it. So 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:46.640 they gathered voting data from over nine thousand towns and 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:49.359 they found that the Republican Party had gained a zero 0:06:49.400 --> 0:06:52.599 point for to zero point seven percentage points in towns 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:55.880 that had gained access to Fox News and and furthermore, 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:59.640 that the channel had encouraged voter turnout there. Their estimates 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:02.560 are that channel convinced some like three to eight percent 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:06.640 of its viewers to vote Republican, which which sounds like 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:09.479 a small amount, but that is more than enough to 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:14.360 have included like ten tho voters in Florida, which is 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:16.960 enough to have flipped the state, which was the decider 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:22.520 in the year two thousand election certainly was yeah, so 0:07:22.840 --> 0:07:25.200 everything turned on Florida. That's where we had the recount, 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:27.080 and we eventually had to have the U. S. Supreme 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:29.960 Court step in and say, okay, we're putting an end 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:35.200 to this. Congratulations Captain Bush. And to be clear, the 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.800 three to eight percent that were convinced to to vote Republican, 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:42.560 many of those could have been self identifying Republicans. Well, 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:45.840 before the Fox News channel came on, they were just 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:48.720 you know, convinced to go out and actually cast a 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:52.520 vote partially because of Fox News. So it's not to 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:56.400 say that, you know, and when a media uh company 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:59.720 of some sort enters into a region that it magically 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:02.920 changes uh three to eight percent of the population to 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:05.480 that side. You know. I think usually those estimates are 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:09.000 referring to um to undecided voters. Yeah, And the thing 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:11.160 that's interesting here, I think is that this is a 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:15.160 comment about the effects of the availability of different types 0:08:15.200 --> 0:08:18.480 of sources. So it's not necessarily that in these towns 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:21.200 where suddenly they got access to Fox News on cable, 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:24.000 everybody was sat was you know, made to sit in 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:26.600 a room and forced to watch Fox News. But now 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:29.560 you have these sources of available, some people are going 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:32.240 to consume those sources. And it appeared to have some 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:36.439 effect on how people voted. But there are other ways 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:40.040 that selection of messaging in media can have an effect 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:44.560 on voter turnout and on elections. Yeah, so you're referring 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:50.480 specifically to a campaign that Facebook ran to to inspire 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:53.360 people to go out and vote. This is great because 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:57.520 in this case, it is a supposedly entirely neutral message. 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:02.040 It doesn't say go vote for my anarchist candidate clause 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:07.040 mcgrabby clause Yeah, that's why I would vote in that 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:12.680 anarchist party. Yes, absolutely no. No, Facebook, in this experiment, 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:15.800 which Facebook sometimes runs experiments on you guys, I just 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:18.400 you should know that, just flat out to start with, 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:21.120 it's pretty cool. You're helping science, whether you want to 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:26.520 or not. Yeah, you're a product and a science experiment. No, No, 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:29.400 it's it's great though. I mean because because they were 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:33.280 able to gain a sample of sixty one million users 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:36.679 who were eighteen or older who accessed the site on 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:42.240 the day of the congressional election in and and there, 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:45.600 they just put out these messages about going out and voting. 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:49.680 It wasn't again, it wasn't voting for a particular person. Uh. 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:53.800 It was just either either go vote or go vote 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:56.000 and check out how many other friends of yours have 0:09:56.040 --> 0:09:59.240 gone and voted. So the the experiment split their overall 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:02.640 sample into three groups. One percent about uh six hundred 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:05.600 and eleven thousand users was a control group that actually 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:09.200 received no message. Another one percent received a purely informational 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:11.680 message at the top of their news feed. That just 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.800 encouraged them to vote, linked to info about local polling spots, 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:18.839 provided an optional voted button to click, and and gave 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:21.400 account of other Facebook users who had clicked on it. 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:26.120 Cent of the sample, about sixty million users got all 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:28.800 of that informational stuff, plus a little social message that 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:31.960 included the profile picks of up to six of their 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:35.400 Facebook friends who had clicked the I Voted button. And 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:39.360 they were furthermore that the researchers were furthermore able to 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:43.080 match six point three million of those users with public 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:47.319 voting records to see whether their messages had affected voting practices. 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:51.120 And I mean they did well. Okay, they found that 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:59.200 the informational message actually had no effect, but but the 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:03.480 social message made people point three percent more likely to 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:07.280 click through to polling information and point four percent more 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:11.360 likely to actually go and vote. And that might sound 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:14.400 like a tiny effect, but remember that we're dealing with 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:18.120 those those millions and millions of study participants. So the 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:22.719 researchers estimate that about three hundred and forty people went 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:25.680 to the polls who otherwise would not have gone because 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:28.720 they saw that social message. Yeah. The interesting thing to 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:32.439 me here, besides the fact that there was a noticeable 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:40.000 effect of this approach is that Facebook could very easily 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:46.200 sway an election simply by sending the go vote message 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:49.840 to people that had been identified as being sympathetic towards 0:11:50.320 --> 0:11:53.040 the mission statement of Facebook. So in other words, that 0:11:53.080 --> 0:11:58.320 Facebook has particular uh policies that they really want past, 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:01.679 and there are particular politicians as associated with those policies. 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:05.960 And because we share everything we have on Facebook, we 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:09.440 we tell Facebook everything our deepest, darkest secrets, we whisper 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:14.319 into its ear, they can identify with pretty high precision 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:19.040 which people would be the most sympathetic toward the candidates 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:22.040 that they themselves would want to support. Or, if you 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:26.760 want to get conspiratorial, in another direction, you could say 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:30.800 that Facebook could potentially sell this service to a candidate. 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:34.680 So maybe if suddenly clause Mate gravity Claus is flush 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:39.120 with cash, he could go and pay Facebook to just 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:42.800 tell people who have said supportive things about the Anarchist 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:45.800 Crab Party to go vote on election day, but not 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:48.679 to tell anybody else to go vote, right, So, in 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:52.080 other words, the ones who are most likely to support 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:57.480 that message get the extra incentive or the extra encouragement 0:12:57.480 --> 0:12:59.720 to go and vote. The other people don't get that 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:03.959 in uragement, and ultimately Facebook could say, look, we didn't 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:06.080 tell them who to vote for. We didn't tell the 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:09.080 other people not to vote. All we did was Santana 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:12.920 vote message. That's all we said. And it ends up 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:15.320 being this. You know, it's it's almost like all we 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:17.200 had to do was put the idea into people's heads 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:19.720 and stand back and let the rest happen. Now, that's 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:23.640 about a social networking platform. That's something that could potentially happen, 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:28.520 although you could probably figure that out, like if you 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:30.520 were talking about numbers large enough where that sort of 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:33.240 thing would probably become a parent pretty quickly and I'm 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:37.240 guessing would not reflect too well upon said social network. 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:41.280 Let's talk about search engines and and why they would 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:45.200 matter in an election is just that people use them 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:47.920 to do research these days. Uh. For example, in the 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:52.320 days leading up to end just following the presidential election, 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:57.040 Google users interest in search terms related to Romney reached 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:00.480 the highest that they have ever been by far are 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:03.360 and terms related to Barack Obama spiked higher than they 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:06.520 had since his initial election in two thousand eight. So 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:10.800 people were they were cramming for the final So that's 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:13.240 the thing. Right. If if people are turning to search 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:16.959 engines in order to get information, and we've already established 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:20.880 that the types of information you get can influence your decisions, 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:24.800 it stands to reason that the search engines results page 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:28.360 has to be pretty important. Yeah, but okay, let me 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:31.000 play the dumb guy here. Okay, sure, no, not the 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:34.160 dumb guy. Let me play the guy with a reasonable concern. Okay, 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:38.760 reasonable concerned guy. The Internet is a democratizing force, because 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:41.360 isn't it great that you can go into a search 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:45.160 engine and you can get information that represents all the 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:48.080 points of view out there. You can find articles that 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:51.480 are pro Barack Obama, you can find articles anti Barack Obama, 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:53.960 you can find pro Mitt Romney, you can find anti 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:57.160 Mitt Romney. And you might only be able to find 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:00.760 articles that are pro Clausemate Grabby Clause. That's because he 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:05.720 is so wonderful. But the point is, whatever information people 0:15:05.840 --> 0:15:08.840 want to present, whatever opinions they want to publish, you 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:12.640 can find it on the Internet. So why why wouldn't 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:16.080 the Internet be a perfectly neutral source to get your 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:20.080 information from? Well, first, that works under the assumption that 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:23.480 every single web page out there is treated equally by 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:26.000 search engines. Ah, and we know that not only is 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:28.720 that not the case, it in fact cannot be the 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:33.240 case because how would you present every single potential return 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:36.680 on any given query where they're all ranked at the 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:41.920 same level. Would you just have an infinitely scrolling bar, 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:45.320 would you just have a camera view that is constantly 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:48.680 hovering over different UH titles? And even so, then what 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:51.440 order do you put them in? Because that alone creates 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:53.920 some sort of sense of rank. Now you could say, well, 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:57.800 wait a minute, what if we randomize search results so 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:01.760 that we and nothing gets prefering chilly treated and featured 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:05.280 towards the top. But that would sort of go exactly 0:16:05.320 --> 0:16:08.360 at cross purposes of what somebody like Google is trying 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:11.240 to do, where they're constantly trying to give you the 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:14.760 best possible result for whatever terms you entered. Yeah, that 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:17.280 that's why we go to Google more often than to 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:21.640 other search engines, because it more frequently returns us links 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:23.600 that were interested in, right, so that it would go 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:27.160 entirely against their interests and to be frank, our interests 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:29.560 if they were to say, well, let's randomize all of 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:32.640 the different articles about Barack Obama and Mitt Romney so 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:36.560 that none of them get preferential treatment. Randomization would just 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:39.880 mean that for Because let's go outside of the elections 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:43.440 for a second. You don't want random results for any 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:46.160 given query. When you put in a query. What you're 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:48.480 the what you want to see on that first page 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:51.160 of results, which I'll get to in a second, is 0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:54.600 a link to a site that answers the question you have, 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:57.760 gives you the information you want, links to the restaurant 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:00.760 you're looking up, whatever it may be. That's what you get. 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:03.960 You aren't You don't want a random thing that happens 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:07.439 to relate tangentially or otherwise to whatever it was you 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:14.080 were looking for. So, because of Google's uh uh efficient 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:19.000 means of returning search results, it has shaped our behaviors online. 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:21.640 And this is something that we've seen over and over 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:25.359 again in various studies. So most of us don't bother 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:28.239 to look beyond the first page of search results for 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:32.080 any given query. Yeah, most of us, And most of 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:34.920 us put in a search query. Well, and you don't 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:38.080 want to write you have better things, Yeah, you have 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:41.000 better things to do than to go through eighteen pages 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:43.639 of search results trying to find one that is the 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:46.480 closest and most relevant to to what you are searching for, 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:49.400 at least if it's something you know, especially something casual, 0:17:49.520 --> 0:17:52.320 right like I don't. I don't want to spend twenty 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:55.840 five minutes going through to find uh, something like I'm 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:59.040 looking up shoes. Put that on number one. You know, 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.000 in my experience as someone who has been doing various 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:05.320 kinds of deep research on the web for many years now, 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:08.720 I can say that I think the organization and prioritization 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:12.679 of Google search results has gotten demonstrably better over the 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:15.400 past ten years or so. It used to be much 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:19.879 more common that to find the ideal example of the 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:21.960 thing I'm looking for, I would have to go deep 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:26.680 into other pages. That happens way less now. Now It's 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:30.280 it's way more common that exactly the thing I'm looking for, 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:33.000 or the best example of the thing I'm looking for 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:35.800 available on the web is on the first page, which 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:38.920 is both good and bad. It's good in the sense 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:42.959 that we're finding the stuff we want more quickly than before. 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:45.840 It's bad and that if you are doing research into 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:49.159 a topic and you're unfamiliar with that topic, you have 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:52.479 been conditioned to go after those first few links, and 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:55.560 it may behoove you to go deeper to find to 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:58.119 get a full understanding of whatever topic it is that 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:03.200 you're you're researching. Um. But see, I mostly do research 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:07.320 on academic subjects. And this is also problematic because if 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:11.080 you're looking at academic subjects, most of the time, not always, 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:13.720 but most of the time, you're looking at a kind 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:17.440 of objective approach to whatever the subject matter is. And 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:21.119 most of the subjects that you're researching are fairly objective 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:23.480 to begin with. I mean, they're they're not something so 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:27.439 hot button as as political stuff, right, So if I 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:31.199 were doing searches on political stuff, it may be that 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:34.800 I would discover more of leaning on one side or 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:37.399 the other. I mean that's a possibility. I just haven't 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:42.080 done that. That's not what I use Google for. Well, yeah, 0:19:42.119 --> 0:19:45.520 and if you do go deep into the search results 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:49.440 on certain political candidates, you'll find that there's tons of 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:52.760 garbage out there that's not going to be useful to 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:55.440 anybody on either side unless you're just looking for some 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:58.920 slander to rile you up. Sure, sure, well, And and 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:03.119 that's for that's for relatively you know, popular terms that 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:05.399 a lot of people are going to be writing about. 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:08.840 That The the problem that I wind wind up running 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:11.359 into with Google is that I don't know, you know, 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:13.719 I do so much research. I start so much research 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:16.200 there that I'd say that about like once every week 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:18.760 or two, I wind up having to go through some 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:22.160 like dozen iterations of a search term or or dig 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:25.240 like several pages back in the search results just to 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:28.679 find what I'm looking for. Partially probably because of the 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:31.200 human error of me looking for information on a topic 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:33.480 that I know nothing about and thus don't know the 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:38.960 right terms to search with. But sometimes it's kind of like, no, Google, 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:41.919 I did not want to know about specialty cheese shops 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:44.600 in my area. When I searched for active cheese culture, 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:48.320 you find like the neighborhood where all the joggers go 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:51.080 to the cheese shop. Yeah, that's the active cheese culture 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:54.680 in my neighborhood. Yeah, Or is it the one where 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:58.080 the cheeses are all living in a culture where they're 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:03.280 active like Fraggle Rock. I encounter the same thing all 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:07.000 the time researching for podcasts. In fact, in fact, the 0:21:07.000 --> 0:21:09.760 the other topic that we will be recording today. As 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:12.080 we're sitting in the studio, I was having issues with 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:14.560 that where I kept on going back and putting in 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:17.560 different search terms because I thought there's got to be 0:21:17.600 --> 0:21:21.280 a study about this, and I could not find something. So, 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:24.359 I mean, this is a common issue. So that's also 0:21:24.640 --> 0:21:27.040 something that take into account, is that the search results 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:30.360 will be as close to relevant as possible. It behooves 0:21:30.359 --> 0:21:32.360 Google to have that. If if Google was seen as 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:36.600 being an unreliable source for relevant information, people wouldn't use Google. 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:39.240 And that's where Google's value is. So they have they 0:21:39.280 --> 0:21:42.680 have a an incentive to do that. However, Yeah, so 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:46.640 let's look at the ways then the search results actually 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:50.440 do matter in practice. Yeah. Sure, because again, you don't 0:21:50.480 --> 0:21:52.600 have to take our word for it. People, people have 0:21:52.680 --> 0:21:55.960 done actual research on how likely people are to click 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:58.680 past the first page of Google results. Done at all 0:21:59.119 --> 0:22:02.719 tell me only what percentage of clicks go to the 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:08.040 first page. So more than nine out of ten clicks 0:22:08.400 --> 0:22:10.639 in Google results are going to happen out of the 0:22:10.680 --> 0:22:12.480 first page. Yeah, Or if you want to think of 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:14.840 it another way, fewer than one out of ten will 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:17.360 go to the second page or beyond. Yeah, So it's 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:19.880 not just to the second page, it's to all other 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:22.439 results in the entire web come by. Yeah, when you 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:26.440 see like four point eight trillion results returns from for 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:31.040 your search query, nine five percent of the clicks are 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:33.560 going on that first page and not even on that 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:36.320 first page, right, Yeah, thirty two point five percent of 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:39.639 them are going straight to that first result. Now is 0:22:39.680 --> 0:22:43.280 this including the sponsored ad results? This is going to 0:22:43.400 --> 0:22:46.920 the I believe it's the non sponsored ones, So sponsored 0:22:46.920 --> 0:22:49.399 ones also take up some of that percentage. Obviously, the 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:53.720 second result gets seventeen point six percent, So clearly first 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:55.760 place is the place to be. That's where you're going 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:58.720 to get the most traffic um And also, if you 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:01.639 look at the last results on the first page of 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:04.560 a search engine results page, why would you ever scroll 0:23:04.600 --> 0:23:06.600 all the way down to the last result on the 0:23:06.600 --> 0:23:09.240 first page. Well, very few people do, as a matter 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:13.600 of fact, but those who do still greatly outnumber those 0:23:13.640 --> 0:23:15.040 who go to the second those who go to the 0:23:15.040 --> 0:23:16.920 second page. So yeah, if you look at the number 0:23:16.960 --> 0:23:20.199 of people who click on the the final result on 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:23.600 the first page of a search engine results page, it's 0:23:25.080 --> 0:23:28.199 more people than those who click on the first result 0:23:28.240 --> 0:23:31.920 of the second page. So if you're somebody who's putting 0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:35.120 content on the web, whether whether you're trying to monetize 0:23:35.119 --> 0:23:37.840 it as a business like you're writing articles and make 0:23:37.840 --> 0:23:40.480 your money through advertising, you need clicks to keep going, 0:23:41.400 --> 0:23:43.920 or whether you're just trying to get your message out 0:23:43.960 --> 0:23:45.720