Los Angeles Public Relations

An interesting and unexplained phenomenon has started to appear on the internet – Google may actually be shaping the news.

Google comes out with new illustrations for their homepage, known as Google Doodles, on a regular basis – each doodle links to a search term that describes it. For the most part, Google Doodles mark anniversaries of important days in history and receive hundreds of thousands of search hits (from users that click the link on the image).

Unexplained Phenomenon

Today, Google put up a picture of a space ship that had abducted the ‘O’ right out of Google’s logo

Just hours after Google posted the image, the search term that it linked to ‘Unexplained Phenomenon’ became the most searched term on Google (see Trends chart below)

The odd thing in all of this is that a couple hours after that The Guardian (UK Publication) came out with a story titled “Unexplained phenomenon: Why will we always be captivated by UFOs”.

By naming their article using the keyword “Unexplained phenomenon” The Guardian was able to gain first rank for the most searched keyword on the web. Since The Guardian wrote the ‘Unexplained Phenomenon’ article after it became popular, it stands to reason that they wrote it because it became popular.

All of this begs the question: how much is Google and it’s control over massive audiences influencing the media?

The Guardian isn’t the only one following Google’s lead on internet trends and conforming their editorial content to fit – even huge organizations like CNN, The LA Times and more have been regular users of this method.

One could look at this technique in either a positive or negative light; either Google has control over the mainstream media (more fodder for the Conspiracy Theorists’ case that Google is taking over the world!) OR The media could simply be providing Google’s users with content they are already looking for.