The language of a question now decides which companies exist in the answer.

Asked in Norwegian, ChatGPT named three Norwegian tools and no American ones. Asked in English from the same desk, it did the reverse. The language of a question now decides which companies exist in the answer.

Someone in Oslo asked ChatGPT, in Norwegian, to recommend accounting software for a freelancer. It named Fiken, Tripletex and Conta, three Norwegian products, and no American one. Minutes later, from the same connection, the same person asked the same question in English. The list now read FreshBooks, QuickBooks and Wave, and the Norwegian tools had gone.

Nothing about the buyer had changed. Same city, same category, same machine. The language of the question had selected the market, which is the finding of a controlled study posted to arXiv by a researcher in Tallinn who ran 234 such tests across four countries and six languages.

I run ESBO Ltd, a link building and brand mentions agency with a publisher network in 53 languages, so the result surprised me less than it should have. Clients find out the same way every time: a company that shows up reliably in English answers asks why German buyers never see it, and the honest reply is that German buyers are not asking in English. We started placing Spanish-language mentions of our own agency this year for the same reason.

The counts are lopsided. Where the question was asked in the official language of the country, a global brand appeared in one of 24 runs.

Source link