The Catalan language has regained its visibility in Google search results after the search engine updated its algorithm. Thus, the presence of Catalan-language pages in the top results yielded by the search engine when the user's settings are in Catalan has more than doubled. Currently, 57% of the top three results provided are in Catalan, compared to 24% just a month ago, as detailed by the Alliance to Guarantee the Digital Presence of Catalan, a body promoted by the Catalan government and formed by ten organizations, which has actively collaborated with the digital giant to recover the visibility of Catalan websites in the search results, after last year users voiced complaints that despite having language options set to Catalan, their results were being provided in Spanish. "Google has started to apply changes to its algorithm and today it can be confirmed that the visibility of web content in Catalan has improved substantially", highlights the Alliance.
Google itself published a message on social media this morning explaining the improvements it has made to better serve the speakers of different languages and gave a special shout-out to the Catalan internet users who were key in identifying a problem which was, in the end, found to affect many different languages: "Thanks to all who gave us examples in different languages to test our improvements with, including Catalan speakers and @digitalencatala," said the developers at Google.
Improved visibility of Catalan content
A study last year by the Alliance found that the visibility through Google search of web content in Catalan had become seriously harmed after previous changes in the search engine's configuration: in fact, it was calculated that two out of every three websites in Catalan had lost visits as a result. However, with the new changes, the new change the situation has turned around. The Alliance set up a team that was able to diagnose the extent of the problem by analyzing the traffic to more than 600 web pages with content in Catalan and other languages. With the results obtained, they produced a report, published in June, which helped to objectify and quantify the problem. And that served to open a technical dialogue with the engineering departments of Google and Microsoft to solve a malfunction that affected many languages and cultures around the world, which no one had previously defined or quantified. Thanks to this report, Google has made changes to its algorithms, which has improved visibility. Users who have their language options configured for Catalan can verify this by searching for "línia L5 metro", "Merce Rodoreda" or "FC Barcelona" which used to lead with pages in Spanish and now point to pages in Catalan.
The Catalan business minister, Roger Torrent, emphasised the importance which his government gives to making the Catalan language stronger and more present everywhere, including on the Internet, adding "that one of the requirements is that search results don't discriminate against it". In this regard, Torrent added that "we will continue to pay attention and analyze the evolution of the data, which we hope will continue to improve, but we can already confirm that the problem has turned around and has clearly entered the solution phase."