

Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions - jtallant
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/romanians-are-smart-or-how-to-change-the-google-autocomplete-suggestions?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+seomoz+%28SEOmoz+Daily+Blog%29

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cristianpascu
The moment this campaign started, I felt it was unnatural. Just drive through
the center of Bucharest once, and you'll see just how smart Romanians are. I'm
not one of those that feel like that they don't belong to this country, but we
still have a long way to go.

Funny thing is that even romanian searches would yield 'Romanians are rude'
and similar suggestions. Cause we are, just like other nations around us from
the former communist countries. After aprox. 50 years of living under constant
pressure that what's yours will be taken away, now everyone sees everyone as a
potential threat. It's our/their blood. And it'll take a while until things
will change. They're changing, but I'm not sure campaign like these will make
a big difference.

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pbz
The problem with Romanians (imo) is low self esteem and negative self image.
Like you said, after many years of psychological abuse it's hardly any
surprise. If they could only see their potential ... unfortunately, most times
you have to be unplugged from negativity to see the positives.

~~~
rdtsc
> The problem with Romanians (imo) is low self esteem and negative self image

Hmm interesting. I always thought them to be smart and persistent, rather than
having "low self esteem". Romanian programmers are one of the best out there.
But they also create some of the worst viruses as well. Maybe years of being
bullied and managed by everyone creates a distrust of any laws or authority.
But I still don't see the negative self image thing though...

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pbz
My comment was about the population in general. They focus on the negatives
(perceived poverty, perceived lack of culture, perceived mediocrity, etc)
while ignoring the positives. Similar to how an above-average looking girl
beats herself down because her nose is not perfect, or something else trivial,
while ignoring and downplaying anything nice or even extraordinary she may
have. Programmers, working usually in a global market, are more aware of their
standing, and hence have a better self image.

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JonnieCache
My favourite was when it used to complete "chinese people are" with "aliens."
extremely odd.

I also enjoyed it recently when the top result for "define an english person"
was the wikipedia article "cunt." That one smacked of deliberate organisation.

Anyway, aren't the search autocomplete suggestions based on the distribution
of n-grams in google's index, as much as in the search terms?

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jim-greer
> I also enjoyed it recently when the top result for "define an english
> person" was the wikipedia article "cunt." That one smacked of deliberate
> organisation.

The funny thing about some of these is that they become victims of their own
success - the bomb doesn't work now because all the results are for blogs,
reddit, etc talking about the bomb.

> Anyway, aren't the search autocomplete suggestions based on the distribution
> of n-grams in google's index, as much as in the search terms?

My wife would know for sure, but I believe it is more based on search volume.
When you type "hacker news" you get:

hacker news search

hacker news mobile

hacker news api

Pretty clear that it's getting those from search volume, not n-grams.

~~~
andyking
I regularly do a Google search for "Ofcom MCA maps", a rather specialist
subject that takes you to the following page that's impossible to find on the
website itself:
[http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/radiolicensing/mcamaps/MCAs.h...](http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/radiolicensing/mcamaps/MCAs.htm)

When I first searched on this, Google didn't suggest it at all, and the page
itself was half-way down page 1. Now, it's up there at the top (even when
logged-out). I can't imagine very many people search this term--so I can only
assume my regular searches have pushed it into the search engine's
consciousness.

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armandososa
I tried with a bunch of nationalities and every one returns equally negative
results for "[Nationality] are". I don't know why people get so upset about
stereotypes. I bet almost every one is stupid/lazy/ugly by the opinion of
random strangers in the world.

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moilolita
In order to understand why romanians take this so seriously, you need to
understand the context. Romania is widely regarded by the western Europe as
backward, poor and corrupt. On top of this, Romania has the largest Roma
minority in the region ~500.000 according to
wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_(Romani_subgroup). The average westerner can't
distinguish a romanian from a roma/romani/gipsy although they are quite
distinct. In the last 20 years there were several waves of romanian immigrants
hitting the western europe, including the Roma minority which are highly
nomadic by tradition and very visible in the west because they beg and steal
aggressively and live in slums in very primitive conditions. This lead to the
association romanians = gipsies, thiefs, primitives etc. The current campaign
is a response to these stereotypes, which unfortunately are easily promoted in
western europe especially since western massmedia can't pick on blacks and
arabs anymore cause that's clearly racist and open racism is not trendy
anymore.

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ktizo
I'd say that in my experience, the Roma don't beg and steal particularly worse
than any other marginalised or impoverished group. There may be a culture of
theft among some of the poorer groups, but that is hardly unique, a culture of
theft is extremely common in a lot of widely varied communities around the
world, from energy companies to impoverished slums.

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bad_user
My experience contradicts with yours.

First of all I'm not trying to paint all gypsies with the same brush. I
actually know a couple that are very educated, very honest and very hard-
working human beings. But within all the "Roma" minorities, there are sub-
groups and not all of them are created equal.

In general in Romania there are many gypsies that are definitely not
marginalized and impoverished.

Some of their culture is also part of ours (e.g. many people like their
music), their children go to the same schools as Romanians, some of their
words became a part of our language, interracial marriages are not at all
uncommon (up to the point that for some people their origin is not at all
visible) and they also receive lots of subsidies from the government ... they
definitely are NOT marginalized. If anything, some sub-groups of this minority
are marginalizing themselves.

Also, there are many gypsies that are filthy rich. Come down here sometimes
and I'll show you entire villages of villas (i.e. big and luxurious country
residences) that are inhabited by gypsies. Those villas come paired with
luxury cars too. And some of them still steal, still beg for money on our
streets or in other countries, some of them still live in tents in their own
backyard.

~~~
ktizo
My experience is it varies site by site, family by family and individual by
individual. Stereotypyes can fit cultures but they become fairly destructive
(and sometimes even self-fulfilling) when you start applying them to
individuals or treating them as rules.

I know quite a few travellers, roma and irish gypsies and the one thing I do
know is all three groups are tight and fairly insular, especially from each
other. And like any tight groups they are very good at reflecting the
attitudes they percieve to be directed towards them.

For the record, I am not from any of these groups and have had relatively few
problems with them, when compared to other groups I have interacted with.
Drunk anglo-saxon football fans, for instance.

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igul222
The problem with this is that, unlike traditional Googlebombing which relies
on lots of links to a certain page, "Romanians are smart" will quickly drop
off the search suggestions as soon as this campaign loses popularity. Gaming
search suggestions requires constant upkeep effort.

~~~
__float
Is this really a problem though? It would seem "Romanians are ___" is a rare
search term as it is--the negative terms are likely old and low-frequency,
especially in comparison to this recent surge in positive queries.

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igul222
This specific instance might not be, but search suggestions could become as
problematic as search results. Try "Rick Santorum is ____".

~~~
zackattack
That's if you're competing in your own niche. What if you wanted to
_positively_ influence the search results that came up for your company?
"igul222 i buy so much in a year that i want a discount" "igul222 write
testimonial" "igul222 frequent buyer program" "igul222 secret promotion"

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dgquintas
For what it's worth, "romano" means Roman in Spanish. As in, an inhabitant of
the city of Rome, both in the classical and modern senses. The proper Spanish
term would have been "rumano". I guess the guys over at the Italian capital
are happy about the free compliments

~~~
ubernostrum
"People called Romanes, they go, the house?"

~~~
Tangurena
For those who don't get the reference:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8>

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igul222
Also interesting is that the campaign chose "Romanians are smart", when they
could have used much more positive phrases like "Romanians are friendly".
Typically being "smart" is a stereotype already well-covered by too many other
ethnicities (primarily Asians).

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nsns
Obviously no "people" are smart or stupid or anything else. You can only
generalize like this if you don't know many of them, and so such
generalizations are always a mark of ignorance, never of true knowledge. This
is not only true for human users, it seems also true for the current state of
the net.

It should always be remembered that the internet doesn't encompass the entire
world, far from it, it is still a playground for a very limited elite, with
certain views and perceptions (just recall for example how many people around
the world don't even have a bank account, they are many, but are seldom heard
on the net). I've googled certain cultural terms from different societies, and
at times couldn't find anything or could only find extremely limited
information, because these themes were outside the scope of the usual
demographics of internet users.

This of course is rapidly changing, with net use going the way of mobile phone
use. And I guess a general adoption of the net will also mean English will
lose its hegemonic place.

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nullflux
I'm going to ask the dumb question that the article doesn't explain: why do
people hate Romanians so much? I've never found Romanians awful people. Is
this just more ethnocentric rubbish and typical hostility toward Eastern
European immigration?

~~~
vixen99
In the UK at least, they get a bad press.thanks to the criminal element who
find lucrative pickings in Britain.Go to a popular newspaper such as the Daily
Mail, search and count the negative stories and you'll soon have your
explanation.

~~~
almost
Please don't go the Daily Mail for anything more than an idea of what small
minded scared bigots we English sometimes can be.

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drKarl
First of all, as dgquintas pointed out, los romanos son (Spanish) is wrong, as
this means Romans are. The correct term is Rumanos.

Secondly, google autosuggest is not necessarily smart... try writing "I hate
it when".

Finally, I think prejudices against romanian people are based on the fact that
an important part of romanian inmigration into european countries is composed
by gipsy romanians, which sadly tend to beg for money, steal or perform other
crimes (not all of them, of course, it is a generalization based on what
people see and perceive themselves). But of course, only a small portion of
romanian people are romanian gipsies...

~~~
JoachimSchipper
"The stereotype that (group) is (bad) is completely incorrect! You see, only
(subgroup) is (bad)."

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rdtsc
One thing I'll say about Romanians is that I noticed they distrust each other,
or they are just not friendly towards each other. For example I've noticed how
the immigrant community acts and while other communities opt to stay together,
mingle and be friendly with each others, Romanians abroad don't give a hoot
about other Romanians, they are willing to integrate into the local culture as
fast as possible and forget about other Romanians.

~~~
alexseman
As a Romanian myself, yes you are mostly right. But another thing to notice is
that most of the Romanians that leave the country aren't well... the cream of
the society so to speak :).

~~~
ovi256
That's not an accurate view, brain drain is a real problem for Romania. While
the phenomenon of Romanian manual labourers crowding Spain and Italy is well
known, and oh so stereotyped by local media, there's a lot of emigration of
highly trained (or soon to be highly trained) engineers and researchers to
Western Europe and the US. But these people tend to be cosmopolitan and blend
in extremely well, so they don't raise awareness of Romanians among
foreigners.

And precisely this is the second focus of the campaign: raising awareness that
there are a lot of emigrated high-achieving Romanians, quietly blending in.

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spyder
This campaign doesn't change the reason why peoples are searching for bad
things about Romanians. It's just fixing a symptom but not the source of the
problem.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Yes and no - I'll often note what Autocomplete prompts when I'm doing a
search. Negative autocompletes may impact my perception of something when
doing a related search (say, "Romanian holidays" and at "Romanian"
autocomplete throws up some of the negative terms in the OP).

So it lessens the spread of those negative terms. As you point out, of course,
it doesn't change the (far more important) source issue of people believing
those stereotypes before going into Google.

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vlasta2
It is interesting that none talk about this being spam, the "suggestion box
spam". Would spamming the web with "romanians are smart" actually change
something? Isn't this the actual non-working method that spammers use? Instead
of building good "content", they just pretend to...

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ovi256
This is supposed to correct a perception problem. Of course Romanians are not
perfect, but we're working on that :)

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hinathan
I had no idea Romanian looked so much like Latin, at least for that trivial
"Romanii sunt" clause.

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maaku
Romanian is a latinate/romantic language, like Italian, French, Spanish, or
Portuguese... but for some reason it never gets listed with the others.

Relevant linguistic map:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Romance_20c_en.png>

~~~
riffraff
cause people have been exposed to spanish, portuguese, french and italian all
their life and noticed the similarity, while few heard spoken romansh,
romanian or ladino. Romania (and moldavia) were behind the iron courtain until
yesterday.

Also, as an italian, while i find it possible to understand written romanian,
it's much harder to understand it spoken, as the slavic pronounciation is very
different.

~~~
lucian1900
On the other hand, Romanians often find it very easy to understand Italian,
more so than most other latin languages. I know I do, I can watch Roberto
Benigni films and mostly understand everything, without ever specifically
learning italian (but Italian/English subtitles do help).

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DanBC
[Ukrainians a] gives a few negatives. But, weirdly,

[ukrainians are] autosuggests [iranians are] in the first few positions with
ukrainians down the list.

I didn't submit feedback.

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aufreak3
Typing "google is" brought up "google is evil", "google is watching you" and
"google is racist" ... among "google is awesome" and "google Israel".

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runningonempty
I was born in Moldova. When searching for "Moldovans are" I get...biggest
drinkers. Maybe I should start a similar campaign...

