Global Arab Network | Offensive suggestions by Google for search 'Arab'

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Offensive suggestions by Google for search 'Arab'

Friday, 19 February 2010 18:46

The labour-saving search engine feature Google Suggest, according to the organisation itself, "guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time. " For example, typing [great w] produces the suggestion 'great wall of china,' which Google says is "faster and easier than typing it out." However, it also reveals what others have been searching for on the internet. When that search term is 'Arab,' this reveals some alarming trends. For example, by far the largest search question Google offers to complete is 'why Arabs want Israel,' producing 65,500,000 results. Based on the initial letters typed in, Google will make suggestions by guessing what you are searching for based on the overall popularity of previously conducted searches ("our algorithms use a wide range of information to predict the queries users are most likely to want to see").

Google avows: "We try not to suggest queries that could be offending to a large audience of users. This includes explicit porn words as well as queries that lead to porn sites, dirty words, hate and violence terms." However, their success is limited in this regard. Arabs, along with other ethnicities, may find plenty of offensive terms using this feature.

Below are tables showing the most common suggestions Google makes if one was to search using 'Why are Arabs...' or 'Why Arabs...' Although Google uses a very complex algorithm to render the search results figures, you could say that it reflects what has been searched by people. (The results figures shown were correct as of 18 February 2010.)
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Conducting similar searches for other ethnic groups such as blacks or Asians produces a similar range of pejorative or stereotypical suggestions.
All ethnicities, groups, and denominations of people should be protected from such pejorative treatment and stereotyping.

Arab Media Watch finds that Google is failing in its aim to avoid "offending…a large audience of users." Furthermore, what is alarming about these Google suggestions is that they are linked to actual popular searches conducted by users on the web.

Screenshots of the searches in question are below:

Global Arab Network

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