HK plans to improve SEO for government sites following anthem blunders

The Hong Kong authorities are optimising the Chinese national anthem related content of official government webpages following several anthem sport blunders.

This comes as "Glory to Hong Kong", a song associated with protests in 2019 was mistakenly played at several international sports events. The Hong Kong authorities later requested Google to manually place the correct information of the Chinese national anthem as a top search result on its sites. However, Google defended its decision to refuse HK's request of altering anthem search results back in December last year.

The Sports Federation & Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China (SF&OC) also suggested Hong Kong athletes and teams to display the sign of "T" with their hands to express objection against wrongly played anthem and incorrectly raised regional flag at international sports event.

On Wednesday, Pro-Beijing legislator Eunice Yung had submitted a written request to the authorities to follow up on the incident, including what new measures the government was taking to ensure that the Google search engine would display the “correct national anthem,” and whether the government would request the tech company to “update its algorithms.”

The government said in a written response that the authorities are closely monitoring the search results of regional flag and regional emblem in the internet. “We are also optimising the content of relevant government webpages on the national anthem from the technical perspective to improve the ranking of webpages in the search results,” the statement said.

“Since the information on the Internet is ever changing, search results from a search engine could be different at different times even under the use of the same word or phrase. We recommend that the public should refer to the government website in order to obtain the accurate information,” it added.

The statement also said that the Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau and the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) have been maintaining communication with Google Hong Kong about the case. 

It said that Google has an undeniable responsibility to rectify the incorrect information from the search results. The SITI thus further wrote to the head office of Google in the same month to request the removal of the incorrect search results, emphasising that the existing search results are obviously improper and misleading, as well as violating the "Content policies for Google Search".

The SITI recently had a meeting with the seniors of the Google Asia Pacific. Both sides agreed to maintain communication continuously and identify a proper way to resolve the problem, with a view to ensuring that the correct information of national anthem is provided to their service users by the search engine.

“We strongly requested Google to address the situation and take follow-up actions in a serious manner,” the statement read. The OGCIO had requested Google in writing right after the meeting to remove the incorrect information from the search results and rank the correct information at the top of search results.

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