After the publication of our article “How Google plays along with Russian propaganda in the TOT” in January, we conducted a second analysis and recorded a significant improvement in Google’s news search results in the context of combating Kremlin disinformation.
However, we must also state that Russian propaganda sites have not completely disappeared, and therefore we have prepared recommendations for you on how to get rid of Russian propaganda in your news feed.
Six months ago, we recorded radically different lists of sites offered on Google for the search query “news” in Ukrainian and “news” in Russian. If you searched in Ukrainian, the top list of websites offered to the user was the leading Ukrainian news websites. A search in Russian could lead to Russian propaganda sites, including Ria Novosti, which was recently sanctioned by the EU, and Lenta.ru.
Since then, the world’s largest search engine has demoted Russian propaganda sites in its search results as part of a major change to its algorithms in March and May. Now, when searching for Russian “news” in the temporarily occupied territories, users will be directed to Russian-language versions of leading Ukrainian news sites, and we welcome these changes.
However, the threat of being directed to Russian propagandists remains. As you can see in the screenshots below, when you search for Russian “news” from the Berdiansk location, you can still come across the Russian propaganda outlet Lenta.ru in the second ten search results. In addition, the Ria Novosti agency, which is already under EU sanctions, is also present below.
It should be emphasized that if you search in Ukrainian, you will not find a Russian resource in Google’s search results. However, Russian propagandists are already working on this, as they are creating Ukrainian versions on their multilingual news platforms, including Voice of Europe, which is at the center of the EU scandal over the spread of Kremlin influence and has also been sanctioned.
Instead, when users search for “news” in Russian in Donetsk region, from the city of Donetsk, they can come across not only Ria Novosti’s news feed about the “dpr” but also the website dnr-news.ru, an agency of the self-proclaimed “dpr” entity.
It should be noted that users in the TOT use Russian to search for news, according to Google Keyword Planner. However, the use of Ukrainian has increased, as it apparently allows them to access reliable information from independent Ukrainian news resources and avoid Kremlin propaganda.
A screenshot from Google’s tool for identifying search queries shows that in the TOT (we took Melitopol, Berdiansk, Tokmak, Tokmak, Genichesk for analysis), the volume of searches in Russian (news, news of Russia, Melitopol news, Zaporizhzhia news) remains significant.
How to get rid of Russian propaganda in search in general: first, you need to set Ukrainian as the main language of your browser. Additionally, you need to set the automatic translation of Russian content into Ukrainian in Google Chrome (or another browser).
Then the platform’s algorithm will understand that you do not speak Russian and want to read only in Ukrainian. This will reduce to zero the likelihood of seeing Russian websites in Google search and recommendations. Thus, you will avoid being offered to read materials from resources such as Horlivska Pravda or LenTV24 (screenshot below):
Algorithm of actions:
1. Once you have accessed the Russian page, go to your browser settings in the menu in the upper right corner (click on the icon).
2. Select the Translate function in the list below. Select the option to translate to Ukrainian. After that, the browser will translate all Russian pages into Ukrainian and will not offer you Russian sources in search and recommendations.
An example is shown in the pictures below:
Finally, about Crimea. Previously, search results for the Crimea location were almost identical to those for the Moscow location. Even if a user searched for news in Ukrainian, sites such as Ria Novosti and Lenta.ru were offered. This led the media to conclude that Russian propaganda could be found in Google’s recommendations.
The situation has changed now. And a search in Ukrainian in Sevastopol will certainly lead you to independent Ukrainian information resources – UkrPravda, TSN, Fakty, Radio Liberty (see the picture below). This means that Crimea is waiting to return to Ukraine and is starting to read more in Ukrainian.
Modern warfare is cognitive in nature, and the fight is for your mind as well. Protect yourself from the snares of Russian propaganda and help others by sharing these recommendations with your friends in the TOT.