Rosalía's haunted house and Google's threat to journalism

BarcelonaRosalía owns a magnificent house on a quiet street in Barcelona's Poblenou neighborhood; naturally, as is typical in Poblenou, it's a renovated warehouse. It boasts 117 square meters, exposed beams, large windows, and a meticulously designed interior featuring high-quality materials. At least, that's what dozens of news articles suggest, with headlines like "Metal Beams and Minimalism: This is Rosalía's Impressive House in the Heart of Barcelona" and "This is the House Rosalía Stays in Whenever She Comes to Spain: An Urban Refuge Created with Industrial Motifs." The articles list details of the property, explain some characteristics of the neighborhood, and some even venture to link the house's style to the singer's current artistic phase. Almost none cite their sources. But all these details fit with a project that never came to fruition.

"It surprised me, but it's very funny; it's clearly our project, with some made-up information, because Rosalía doesn't live there," explains Alejandro Varangot, one of the two architects responsible for designing this house, to ARA from Uruguay. "I wish this news were true and that we had built the house in Rosalía!" The descriptions, the neighborhood, and even the exact size of the property—117 square meters—fit perfectly with the project by Varangot and his partner, Gaston Capandeguy. "It was the final project of a postgraduate degree in interior design at Elisava"We had to design a house for a fictional client, who was Rosalía, and we won an award for best final project." The magazine Neo2 echoed and published a review (which made it clear that the singer was a "fictitious client"). But how does one go from this to the publication, five years later, of dozens of news stories about Rosalía's ghost house?

Pablo Ruiz, a consultant specializing in search engine optimization (SEO), explains that the company he works for, SSMAS, detected that Rosalía's house in Poblenou became a trending topic during the first half of November, "reaching a score of 70 out of 100," according to his own bar. There was a spike in searches related to the house, and news articles about it began to appear, generating interest among readers. Rosalía had just released the album Lux And almost any news story that mentioned it generated interest. Like SSMAS, which regularly collaborates with ARA, almost all media outlets monitor and study Google trends. They do this primarily for two reasons: quickly detecting trends allows them to write news stories about what internet users are searching for most at that moment, hoping to rank high in search engine results pages, and it also allows them to create stories that have a better chance of appearing in Google Discover.

Google Discover is a name that's not widely known to the general public, but it's a key player for digital journalism. Much more so than it might seem.

While waiting for the subway, Maria takes out her Android phone, swipes right with her thumb until she reaches a screen with the Google search bar and a never-ending stream of news articles. scroll to check the headlines and sees one that says: "Nor hahaha neither ha ha ha"This is the correct way to spell laughter in Catalan." She clicks and reads it, though what it says leaves her indifferent. A few hours later, she can't remember which publication the article was from, only that she saw it "on her phone." This same headline appears on approximately 900,000 mobile phone screens in just two days, according to Marfeel.

Discover these news stories you've seen on mobileBut not in a specific news app. It's a news feed that's particularly prominent on Android phones (on iPhones, it can be accessed through the Google app) and can deliver an article to hundreds of thousands of mobile devices in just a few hours. The ability to send such a large audience at once to a single article has made Discover a coveted prize for many media outlets, especially in Catalonia and Spain, where Android phones are by far the most common.

"In Spain, if a media outlet doesn't get 60% of its traffic from Discover, it's losing money because that's the minimum," says David González, director and founder of ReddePeriodistas.com, who has in-depth knowledge of the media battle for audiences. SEO strategy consultant Arturo Marimón elaborates further. He explains that media outlets that don't generate content heavily focused on Discover get between 70% and 80% of their audience, while for smaller outlets, this can reach 90%. Larger outlets, those with a well-established brand, are less dependent on Discover, and Discover might contribute 30% of their audience. In any case, Spain is the ninth country with the largest audience on Discover, adds Clara Soteras, SEO consultant for media and digital strategy, citing Chartbeat data from the first half of the year.

The potential of Google Discover means that almost all media outlets are looking for ways to get the most out of it. Google officially recommends that to achieve this Avoid titles clickbait (those that often disappoint the reader upon reading the piece) and tactics to "artificially inflate interaction." Reality doesn't quite align with their recommendations. Researchers Olaya López-Munuera from the Open University of Catalonia and Carlos Lopezosa and Javier Guallar from the University of Barcelona have detected "a significantly higher incidence of headlines clickbait in Discover" than on the front pages of two digital newspapers that they sampled (The Spanish and The Vanguard), as explained in an article published in the academic journal InfonomySpecifically, they conclude that Discover is up to twenty times more likely to show an article with a title clickbait that they are not featured on one of the digital front pages of either newspaper. They also indicate that Discover favors news stories in a similar proportion. soft, those that instead of talking about politics, social problems or international affairs focus on celebrities, lifestyle, entertainment or sports.

Secret Algorithms

Marimón uses Spotify to draw an analogy about how algorithms are changing journalism. "On Spotify, you get paid per play starting at 30 seconds, and that completely changed the way songs are made: before, there was an introduction and then the heart of the song, which was what hooked you. But now they put the heart of the song at the beginning, so that at least this first half minute sticks, and the songs are getting shorter and shorter, because the shorter they are, the better."

As with the search engine, the detailed workings of Google's algorithms that determine which news each person sees on their phone are a secret. But SEO specialists and media audience managers have been uncovering details and clues. This has allowed some media outlets to improve their Discover rankings, and others to find simple solutions that have proven highly productive.

Thus emerged newspapers with articles signed by nonexistent journalists, using fake names, surnames, and social media accounts, a photograph generated by artificial intelligence, and a fabricated biography. Generalist publications with an entire section dedicated exclusively to Mercadona (which the chain does not sponsor). Pretending to be pro-independence digital outlets with a section focused on monarchies, especially the Spanish one, and publishing half a dozen articles each day. All these tactics have only one purpose: to try to attract more viewers to Discover. Copying a story from another source, like the one about Rosalía's ghost house in Poblenou, simply because it's part of a growing trend, without checking or verifying it, is also part of these tactics.

Soteras points out that Google doesn't fact-check news outlets before publishing it on Discover, "although it does have manual reviewers who have blocked some content and even penalized some media outlets." González adds that Google often operates according to the so-called "consensus pattern": if several media outlets report that a fact is true, it considers it true, as happened last month when many publications reported that coup leader Antonio Tejero had died, even though it wasn't true, and Google's algorithms highlighted their stories.

In some publications, SEO managers who aren't journalists have ended up giving orders to journalists. And this has worked for them, achieving sometimes exorbitant audience figures that have translated into revenue. Initially, this revenue comes from advertising, both private and institutional, and in the case of Catalonia, also from subsidies for the Catalan-language press.

The Catalan government has two main lines of support for the media: structural subsidies and those given to specific projects. The structural subsidies aim to be objective: the allocated amounts are based on a formula that includes both audience size and the number of professionals employed. However, since clicks still play a significant role, they can encourage tactics like those mentioned. In recent years, factors have been introduced that reward quality (calculating how many pages a single visit reads and how long a visitor spends on the site), but even so, there's no guarantee that the hired staff will actually dedicate themselves to producing original, valuable news stories and not just generating headlines. clickbait or tricks designed solely for Discover. And if institutional advertising is also planned with only wholesale clicks in mind, the system also ends up rewarding those media outlets that, above all else, seek audience, regardless of the quality of what they publish.

Google changes the rules of the game

Google is constantly evolving, and not just because it periodically tweaks its algorithms. As González explains, "Google has become ChatGPT, forced by the threat of ChatGPT." And it has done so in a way that particularly harms the media. Specifically, it has introduced two new features: AI Overviews and AI Mode. The first is the most visible: for some searches, before offering any links, Google uses artificial intelligence to generate a short paragraph that attempts to answer the user's query.AI Mode It is a conversational chatbot that answers questions asked of it.

In both cases, they generate what are called "zero-click" answers, meaning they directly answer the user's question without the user having to click on any links. Thus, news reports about where to watch a particular match or when university entrance exams start are no longer relevant: if the search engine already provides the answer and no one has to click, why bother? There will be no traffic or advertising revenue. These changes have already begun to reduce the audience that media outlets receive from the search engine.

But Google has also announced changes to Discover, and these are expected to severely impact media outlets. Specifically, Google has begun directly introducing publications from [unspecified sources] into Discover.influencers and brands on social media. While Discover previously showcased news about controversial tweets or scandalous TikTok videos, this news will now have to compete with the tweet itself and the video. It is anticipated that Discover's audience share for media will shrink, while the number of competitors vying for it will skyrocket.

Google isn't making all these changes as part of a planned strategy to harm journalism and the media. It's simply acting in its own best interest. The media have demonstrated to Google that content about influencers It works within Discover and acts accordingly. Its goal is for internet users to spend as much time as possible using its products, not to leave and visit a newspaper's website. However, it will continue to drive traffic to digital newspapers. They will still get it from Discover, and for now, it maintains the featured news module in the search engine when a current affairs search is performed.

Google has also made it clear to the media that it has no intention of backing down. A year ago, it conducted an experiment: it removed news from European media outlets from all search results for 1% of internet users in eight EU countries, including Spain. And it extracted a conclusion that also serves as a warning to others"News from European media in your search has no measurable impact on Google's advertising revenue."

What future awaits media outlets that champion journalism? "Not everyone will survive; there will be a significant drop in traffic, but those who do will see increased advertising revenue because there will be fewer places to place ads, and prices will rise," Marimón predicts. "Media outlets will need a seal of approval, like those for designations of origin or fine wines, indicating that we offer journalism done by humans. Because the rest will be done by artificial intelligence," González anticipates. "Google won't turn off the tap abruptly," Soteras says, "but you can't depend on a single monetization method," he adds, referring to media outlets that rely primarily on Discover. "Anyone still here is already behind."