The "Vibe" of the Search Engine Results Page

The “Vibe” of the Search Engine Results Page

Remember those optical illusions where, depending on how you look at them, you see two different things: in one case, a vase or two faces; in another, an old or a young woman?

Recognizing both interpretations requires a change in perspective. The goal is to take in the image as a whole, what in German is called gestalt: an organized figure that is greater than the sum of its parts. If you’ll excuse the use of a newer term, think of it as the “vibe” of the whole. Gestalt is the vibe.

A list of search results is also a gestalt. Yes, each result is a separate entity. But when you step back from the list, you can discern a pattern—a forest rather than a bunch of individual trees. Seeing the whole forest is key to understanding where on the internet you’ve landed. And who’s controlling the territory.

Consider a claim that China had bought Walmart. We realized something was wrong even before clicking. If China had bought Walmart, that would be a big news story, right? So why did the results page have no recognizable news stories at the top? It’s not just about the individual results; it’s the whole page. Did it look like the results page for a huge breaking news story? Obviously not.

Here’s another example: a search about Margaret Sanger (1879–1966), the founder of what would become Planned Parenthood. Because the topic of abortion is so polarizing—fierce battles rage between pro-choice and pro-life advocates—Sanger has become a lightning rod that attracts intense feelings depending on where you stand. In one of Sam’s research studies, participants were asked to investigate whether Sanger supported euthanasia (also known as mercy killing or assisted suicide), the practice in which someone with an incurable disease is painlessly helped to die.

The authors describe the results people found when they typed “Margaret Sanger euthanasia” into their browser:

(Figure 4.12: Results page for “Margaret Sanger euthanasia” search, April 2016; screenshot not included here.)

Consider the pattern described in this results page. Has this search welcomed us to the Margaret Sanger fan club or catapulted us in an information neighborhood seething with rage at the mention of Sanger’s name?

Apart from Wikipedia, none of the sites is familiar (at least not familiar to us). The account notes that site 1 (lifenews.com), site 4 (lifesitenews.com), and site 8 (liveaction.org) all have “life” or “live” in their URLs. The hostility is evident: site 3 accuses Sanger of racism; site 7 yokes her to Nazis; site 8 says she “changed the world, but for the worse.” Apart from Wikipedia, the gestalt leaves no room for doubt. Sanger is public enemy number one.

One of the fact-checkers we observed scrolled through these results, spending twenty seconds practicing click restraint, just trying to get a sense of where she landed: “A lot of the sites that are coming up . . . seem to be very anti–Planned Parenthood sites. So, lifenews.com, lifesitenews.com, ‘Sanger’s support for racism,’ so clearly these are people who are not very fond of her.” That’s putting it mildly.

She concluded that the anti-Sanger forces controlled the top real estate and that she could find better information by scanning books about Sanger. In the interface described, the toolbar’s “More” menu offered several options. The second was “Books.”

Figure 4.13 is captioned: Restricting a Google search to “Books.” The screenshot is not included here.

After scanning a few scholarly books, the fact-checker realized that the question of Sanger’s stance on euthanasia was far more complicated than any quick soundbite or thirty-second foray would provide.

We’ve focused on doing quick searches because we don’t want you to waste your time. If you know what you’re doing, it’s astounding how much context can be gleaned in thirty seconds. But, as this example shows, quick searches can also show you the limits of quick searches. Trying to figure out where Margaret Sanger stood on the issue of euthanasia would require an investigation across multiple books and articles. Even then, the answer is not so clear-cut.

There’s no formula that guarantees your first click will be the best one. Click restraint is far from an exact science. But taking in the full set of results before you click increases the chances you’ll find something reliable rather than clicking away at the first thing that catches your eye.