Author: seaborgiummechanic

A couple of months ago, I sat down and looked up every Chicago neighborhood in Google. I made note of how Google portrayed each neighborhood, focusing on loaded keywords and adjectives. This is the final article in a four-part series discussing my findings. I suggest you start at the beginning.

We've discussed in the previous articles in this series how Google can affect our perceptions by changing the order of their search results. We've also discussed how a Google search results page (SERP) will have both a list of links, and a list of "related searches" at the bottom. In the course of my research I noticed that for some neighborhoods, Google would suggest "homes for sale" as a related search. In some cases it would alternatively suggest "condos for sale" or "lofts for sale." For others it would only suggest "apartments for rent." The difference is more important than you'd initially think. Continue reading Is Google Quietly Manipulating Property Values? Chicago Neighborhoods According to Google, Part 4

This is part of an ongoing series discussing how Chicago neighborhoods are described through the lens of Google's search results. You can find a list of all four articles at the bottom of the post.

Today we'll be looking at how Google's search results portray the racial and economic breakdown of Chicago's neighborhoods. As I mentioned last week, I tallied mentions of race and class separately from the emotional terms. While calling a neighborhood "poverty-ridden," "affluent" or "Swedish" might have a positive or negative impact on your overall impression of a given area, it won't necessarily have the same impact for everyone in the same way as something like "dangerous," "pretty" or "boring."

In some ways, Google's take on the race and class makeup of Chicago is far more important than any adjectives sprinkled through its search results. It's crucial information for many newcomers that real estate agents cannot discuss. In fact I would argue that race and class information are probably the main things that would prompt someone to Google a neighborhood in the first place.

Race and National Origin

Chicago is infamous as a highly segregated city. Maps such as the one featured on Radical Cartography use census data to highlight exactly how clustered we are along racial lines. Google's map, by contrast, looks like a crazy quilt that's been nibbled by moths. Continue reading Who are the people in your neighborhood (according to Google)? Chicago Neighborhoods According to Google, Part 3

Last Monday I introduced our most recent research project, involving Google search results and the impressions they give of Chicago's many neighborhoods. I outlined the goals and methods of the project there. I also revealed the 55 neighborhoods that are only mentioned by real estate companies on the first page of results, and explained why those results are unreliable when trying to choose a neighborhood to live in.

Today we're going to start getting into the heart of the matter. If you were using Google to research Chicago neighborhoods, would its results influence your initial impressions in a good or bad way?

The Scoring

Here at RentConfident we've got some experience in creating scoring systems. We designed our Confidence Factor as a means of weighing risks in Chicago apartments, and include it with every Signature Report. When it came time to analyze our search engine results I applied those same scoring design skills to create a system that tried to make something objective out of a very subjective thing. After all, can you really quantify the emotional impact of one adjective over another? It turns out that to some extent you definitely can.

Every neighborhood started with a score of 0. Here's the scoring that I came up with: Continue reading Does Google love or hate your Chicago neighborhood? Chicago Neighborhoods According to Google, Part 2

A couple of week ago, Politico Magazine covered a recent study about how search engines could change opinions in a big way by changing the order of their results. The research focused on something called the "search engine manipulation effect," or SEME. In a controlled study, over 20% of test subjects with no prior opinions on a given candidate wound up choosing sides based only on the order of search results presented to them. The article was focused on how this could affect political elections, but it made me curious as to how search engines, independent of the sites they catalog, could be affecting our decisions on where to live.

I decided to do a little study of my own. I took a list of 234 Chicago neighborhoods, generated by the Chicago Department of Tourism. I ran searches for all of them on Google and analyzed the first page of search results. I was looking for key words that could sway a city newcomer's opinion.

Over the next few Mondays I'll be reviewing some of the things I found. Today I'll be talking about my research methods. I'll also be looking at the 55 neighborhoods for which I could find no data at all - Chicago's imaginary neighborhoods.
Continue reading Chicago’s Imaginary Neighborhoods Chicago Neighborhoods According to Google, Part 1