Search Engine Algorithms, Vectors of Semantic Richness?

The language " SMS " or smartphone, the loss of vocabulary, ... are real or felt phenomena that are denounced by many people citing the decline in the level of education. Will the web and more particularly the issues linked to search engines reverse the trend?

The Richness of the French Language

The richness of the French language allows its speakers to express themselves with infinite nuances and also allows them to freely argue a point or develop an idea in detail. 

The above is a logical factor for its use for diplomatic exchanges for many years.

French was once the only lingua franca of all European diplomats before English was imposed after the internationalization of exchanges. There remain from this glorious era of the French language, various words or expressions such as "agrément" which have been taken up almost identically in English: agreement. Source: https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/idees/478351/le-francais-langue-de-la-diplomatie

Could the decline in the use of the French language in diplomacy today, be a result of a decline in the use of the French language and its finesses by French speakers?

How many Words Are Used to Express Oneself Properly?

According to the source below, the number of words used would be :

• 300 to 3000 words for everyday vocabulary, depending on social background;
• 3000 words for the average adult and between 800 and 1600 for a high school student;
• Between 20000 and 30000 words for educated people and between 2500 and 6000 for a high school student.  Source:https://www.accentformation.ca/blogue/2015/combien-de-mots-utilise-t-on-en-moyenne-pour-s-exprimer-en-francais
  

Professor Alain Bentolila introduced the issue of vocabulary known by what he calls the " less endowed ". According to him, these people would only use 250 to 300 words.

Limited Vocabulary Threatens Peaceful Coexistence

Not having the adequate vocabulary to express one's thoughts is very frustrating. But vocabulary, beyond expression, also allows one to develop one's thinking. It would be worrying if it is proven that young people have such a limited vocabulary. Thinking requires less effort and induces simplistic reasoning that can incite extremism.  

Not knowing how to express oneself leads to frustration and irritation that sometimes end up in violence, which becomes the only language that the person employs.

Google, Bing, and the Engines, Problem or Solution?

The web is an infinite source of knowledge. Anyone with a little mastery of the functionality of Google and some understanding of epistemology, specifically source criticism, can learn, understand, and form opinions on countless topics.

• Search Engine Content Ranking
  
  Search engines index different web pages that are worthy of interest, then they rank them according to different criteria of which you can find an overview in this checklist https://www.referencement-challenge.com/checklist-seo-tout-ce-que-vous-devez-verifier-pour-loptimisation/. At the top of these criteria is the content of each page, which is analyzed to see if it meets the user's query.
  
  The semantic richness of the content is taken into account. That's why some writing tools have been created which are quite handy for web writers. See https://cursus.edu/22046/des-outils-daide-a-la-redaction-a-lecriture-par-la-machine
  
  
• Are Engines Getting Smarter?
  
  In the relatively near past, search engines were limited to analyzing word by word to determine the value of content.
  
  Google has developed or introduced as criteria in its results, various algorithms to better understand and determine the added value of a text. First, there was RankBrain, which helped to better understand the search intent of the Internet user. In 2019, it was the turn of BERT, an acronym for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, to be used by the famous engine. BERT allows a better understanding of more complex queries but is also probably used to understand the text of a web page.
  Source: https://www.abondance.com/20191028-41166-plus-dinfos-sur-bert-le-nouvel-algorithme-de-google.html
  
  These changes are also evident in the advent of voice search with smart speakers.
  
  
Rich or Simplified Vocabulary?

Faced with this panorama, it's interesting to ask the question of the richness of vocabulary on the web. Will Google favour pages that are rich in vocabulary but might be too complex for the " low endowed " described by Professor Bentolila or will it favour pages with simple or even simplistic vocabulary.

Let's not forget that one of Google's business models is to advertise products. Advertisers often want as many people as possible to click on their links. For them, it may not be a good idea to have a high standard of semantic richness.

Books: The Embodiment of True Semantic Richness

In conclusion, the business interests are such that enormous vocabulary may eventually become penalizing from that point of view. 

Like what we see on social networks, a portion of Internet users only expresses themselves in few words with a short attention span. Many have seen the news that our attention span would have become less than that of a goldfish, i.e. 8 seconds.

The book, whether in paper or digital form, therefore remains an essential element for anyone who wants to enrich their vocabulary and, beyond that, their general knowledge.