What is the fallout of Google's gender bias inside its search results? Myriam Jessier joins the SEO Rant Podcast to share the problem Google has with gender and language:
How does gender bias play itself out on the SERP?
How certain languages are impacted by Google's gender more bias than others
Why gender bias in search results disincentivizes good content
How Significant Is Google's Gender Bias? Episode Synopsis
Unlike English, many of the world's languages utilize male-specific and female-specific conjugation. That creates a very significant problem for search engines as it opens the door to gender bias among the search results. As Myriam points out, if you search for the female version of something in French, you end up getting the male conjugation on the SERP instead.
Why is that a problem? Well, to use Myriam's example, let's say you're a woman SEO consultant and want to refer to yourself as such in French. If you use female verbiage you're perhaps limiting your potential organic visibility as Google shows the male form of the noun "SEO consultant" on the French SERP.
This creates a vicious cycle. Why create gender-specific content if at the end of the day you know it won't rank? Now the machine, as in Google's machine learning, has less gender-specific content to use in its input.
The point is, many of us in the English-speaking world don't realize the full implication of gender bias within search results. For people in the many countries that utilize male and female-specific language, this can be a very real problem.
For more of the SEO Rant Podcast check out our previous episode on becoming an SEO