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How does Google change what it shows you based on your age, gender, occupation, and even your political leaning? An Australian research project is tracking just that: how major search engines personalise results.

The Queensland University of Technology’s ARC Centre for Automated Decision-Making and Society has launched the Australian search experience project. Following on from a similar project run by Algorithm Watch in Germany in 2017, the project uses crowdsourced search data to allow people outside big tech companies to have insight into the decisions they’re making about search.

Most search engines use more than just the search terms when deciding what to show you, including guessing who and where you are. The impact is opaque as most search companies are tight-lipped about their algorithms but it is critically important to understand how Australians find out about the world around them.

Digital media scholar and project leader Professor Axel Bruns says there’s not a lot known about how search engines personalise information.

“Some variation might be useful,” he said. “We know that search engines personalise the information that might be available to a certain extent. For some topics that can be really problematic. If we’re both searching for vaccine information, we need to have the right information independent of who we are.”

The project asks volunteers to install a plug-in that collects data on results that search engines show you. It does this by invisibly running searches up to six times a day — on terms such as the names of political leaders or references to current events — and recording the results. It doesn’t track a user’s actual searches, just the ones performed without them knowing. 

All users need to do is provide some basic details at the start — such as their age, gender and location — and let it run the background. All data collected is anonymised so it can’t be traced back to the user.

At the end of June next year, the plug-in will stop collecting data and the researchers will publish a full, public dataset. Until then, researchers will publish updates on data it obtains to understand trends in real time.

You can find out more or sign up for the project at the Australian search experience website.