In war-torn Ukraine, Google’s latest update to its core set of rules would have arguably inadvertently created a credible information vacuum that favors Russian disinformation, news executives and experts fear.
The March update, which negatively affected news sites around the world, forced Ukrainian media outlets to cut costs, reassign staff responsibilities, and adjust editorial priorities. It should be noted that newsrooms have also scaled back their policy on the ongoing Russian invasion to accommodate algorithmic changes.
“We don’t think Google woke up one morning and made the decision to punish Ukrainian news sites,” said David Clinch, co-founder of Media Growth Partners, a media strategy and consulting firm. “Our concern, specifically, in Ukraine during a war during a disinformation battle, is that little or nothing has been done to prevent, aid, or offset the most likely effect of this initial change. “
I spoke with newsroom executives in Ukraine to learn more about how Google’s March update to its core set of rules affected their work, what they did to recover, and their considerations for the data ecosystem left behind.
After this update, Socportal, a Ukrainian media outlet that covers public services and human rights issues, lost approximately 70% of its site’s daily traffic. Its advertising earnings have declined by approximately 80%.
The Ukrainian newspaper Focus Media then experienced a 60% drop in its traffic, which also affected the readers of the most important newspaper, Ukrainska Pravda.
“This is my eleventh year in the industry and it’s the first time such a dramatic scenario has occurred,” said Maria Grynevych, editor-in-chief of Socportal.
For Ukrainian media outlets, changes to Google’s Discover, which suggests content to users based on their online activity as part of Google Search, have contributed greatly to the drop in traffic.
Discover, for example, accounts for 60 to 70 percent of the total traffic obtained through Socportal and Focus Media, and more than 30 percent for Ukrainska Pravda, according to the publication’s editors. For Socportal, that traffic dropped to 0 after the upgrade, and for Focus Media and Ukrainska Pravda they recorded drops of 50% and 30%, respectively.
“[In Ukraine] many publishers think they have a lot of direct traffic, but it’s actually traffic from Google Discover,” said Andrey Boborykin, editor-in-chief of Ukrainska Pravda.
And despite Google’s stated goal of reducing low-quality content, some Internet sites in the Discover feed since the update appear to be very unreliable, noted Andrey Sukhrakov, deputy editor at Focus Media.
“On Discover, I only see Ukrainian sites, but some are unnamed sites. It turns out they were created and not years ago, but I see them now,” he said.
In the event of a significant drop in readership, newsrooms, especially smaller ones, cannot wait for the situation to improve.
Socportal, for example, started buying referral traffic in an attempt to succeed in its pre-upgrade numbers. Three months later, they noticed positive changes. ” When we started getting traffic from search engine optimization, Google traffic also increased. And now it’s like that. kind of dynamic,” Grynevych said.
However, this progress comes at a cost. ” [Grynevych] and others like her have had to spend a lot more time, effort and money than they have to rebuild their traffic, their strategy,” Clinch said.
Socportal also commissioned its journalists to do more reporting, for which the newsroom turned to independent editors. “We received a scholarship to cover the social disorders of the war. We used to hire freelancers for this task,” Grynevych said. But now we’re just focusing on the in-house team and paying other people to make news through our grant that’s fully subsidized by our donors. “
Focus Media has fired three members since the March updates due to an inability to pay them, Sukhrakov said. They have also appropriated the media policy on the Russian invasion.
“We’ve adapted to writing kinder content, because we’re seeing that Google is driving more traffic to friendly content, not war. If you write about the war now, Google understands that it can’t monetize it,” Sukhrakov said. It means more politics on lifestyle and fitness issues, he explained.
War fatigue among readers can compound the problem. “Now other people are looking for really funny stories, similar to hard times,” Grynevych said. Boborykine shares this concern: “It’s only herbal that other people are tired of eating so much. “war-like news content. “
Difficult news about the war and similar topics can be misleading, but it is essential, Clinch insisted. The same applies to public service data published through Socportal in times of war, on which Ukrainians depend. We’re advising websites not to publish so much hard news, which is a terrible way for Google to think about this,” he said.
Ukrainska Pravda, with more resources, acquired a generation blog and a sports publication in the past in an effort to keep up with Google’s algorithms.
“We have introduced two other brands that are neither news nor politics,” Boborykin explained. “The acquisition of those two new media brands is part of a diversification strategy because we only need to generate traffic, but we also sell direct, local and programmatic classified ads on those sites. “
Ukrainska Pravda also runs a for-profit events business through which she sells event tickets and sponsorships. “It’s absolutely contradictory that other people need events in a city that is attacked with drones and missiles. But this year, we have almost one event a month. and everyone benefits,” Boborykin said.
Editors and media analysts surveyed expressed fears that Russian disinformation could simply fill the void left by declining readership.
“At the very least, traffic to law enforcement has slowed and there is no indication that incorrect information has done anything more than continue at the same pace,” Clinch said.
After all, fake content doesn’t rely so much on Google search to succeed in eyeballs. “Russian disdata works through social media, influencers, or other amplification campaigns, and is not affected in the same way as through this Google Search. update,” Clinch explained. Any reliance on authoritative data resources exposes the option for disdata to receive more attention, because it doesn’t come from the same methods. “
The truth today is that Google and its fellow tech giants play an enormous role in people’s ingestion of information. This force demands greater accountability, Clinch argued: “Google wants to think very responsibly about how its overall technique for cleaning up searches and solving its problems systems can have an effect in places like Ukraine and other war zones where the accidental consequences can be much more severe than they were. . . perhaps in some other region.
However, it turns out that Google is moving in the opposite direction: it has already taken a step back from the news and threatens to go backwards even further.
When it comes to the active war zone in Ukraine, the stakes are even higher, especially with the alarming misinformation at play.
“We are concerned about the competitive disadvantage this poses to verified journalism and Russian disinformation processes,” echoed Eli Flournoy, co-founder of Media Growth Partners.
“The timing [of the update] would never be good, but now it’s bad. “
The Digital Trade Agreement (DTA) between the United Kingdom and Ukraine entered into force on July 1, 2024 following the final touch through the United Kingdom and Ukraine of. . .
news (at) Financial. ge Letters to the editor: editor (at) finchannel. com
Local Marketing Contact:
(99532) 2252 275 | EXT: 1 (995 558) 03 03 03 (mobile) marketing (at) finchannel. com
Applications from abroad:
(99532) 2252 275 | 76 EXT : 7 ( 995599) 52 52 Email : zviadi (@) finchannel. com Contact the video editor : Email : video (at) Financial. ge
Postal address: 17 Mtskheta Street. Tbilisi, Georgia 0179 The FUNDER
© 2024 JNews – Premium WordPress News & Magazine Theme via Jegtheme.
Log in to your account below
Enter your username or email address to reset your password.