The original Google search algorithm, PageRank, assigned a weight to websites to determine their importance. The more frequently a page was viewed, the more likely it was to appear in a Google search. Over time, this method has evolved into a more complex system, likely influenced by financial incentives and amplified by techniques ranging from search engine optimization to the amplification of semantic clusters through clickbait. Despite these changes, the algorithm worked well for me until I moved to North America.
Now, I struggle to find “my stuff” anymore. For instance, when I search for a specific spare part, I am bombarded with “sponsored results” that only vaguely relate to what I am looking for. Today, I wanted to read about a wonderful movie we watched (in something like an extended lunch break) at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) before casting my vote for the People’s Choice Award. The film was “The Penguin Lessons,” directed by Peter Cattaneo. However, my search results were dominated by the book by Tom Michell and various Hollywood productions featuring penguins, including some Disney content that I don’t particularly enjoy. Not even any zoological documentary turned up, which I would have expected.
Here I am in Toronto, the host city of the great festival, and I find myself needing to activate my VPN through Estonia—not to evade an autocratic government or protect my privacy, but simply to access a more civilized browsing experience and find relevant information on Canadian festival content. On the other hand it is easy to google the Toronto Jazz Festival without VPN. So, that would have put me at ease, until I witnessed the Jazz Festival in my neighborhood recently. I was expecting great things, given that we are in America and somehow not exactly in but close to the cradle of Jazz. I am sure many people enjoyed it, but t was more “Jazz folklore”, if this genre exists. Again switching on the Estonian VPN, the Toronto Jazz Festival becomes thwarted to a tourist attraction. And that’s what it is.
I agree, any search engine must have a hard time filtering relevant and quality results. It is constantly up to external manipulation on the one hand, then it needs to reflect the masses and not some special interest group. And last but not least it needs to make money. So my respect for coming up with anything useful at all. Perhaps also the web has just become too big and we need stochastic parrots to break it down. I am joking. What I find interesting about the google search results, is, that it tells you a lot about the culture you are searching in. And thankfully through a VPN, you can switch these “search cultures” easily. It reminds me if an anecdote I heard about a chatbot which was designed to learn from it’s conversations with the public. The Chinese version of the bot started to recite Chinese poetry, while the US-American became a racist. I hope that’s not true. There is wonderful American poetry, which should not get wasted.
And yes, of course the title of this post is “stolen” here: