Hey Google

MARY REICHERD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, March 29th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: abortion and Google. In the post-Roe versus Wade world, the pro-life movement has discovered entirely new battlegrounds. One is related to the very device you may be using to listen to this podcast.

REICHARD: Pro-life pregnancy centers use technology to reach women in need, Google, for example. But now that process is not so straightforward. And that’s forced an industry-wide change in how women find resources to choose life. WORLD Associate Correspondent Jeff Palomino has the story.

JEFF PALOMINO, REPORTER: According to the Guttmacher Institute, 45 percent of all US pregnancies are unintended. That doesn’t mean they’re all unwanted, but some are:

LESLIE: And when my husband told me, “I think you are pregnant,” and when I have that, this positive test and my first call was “I don’t want the baby. I want to get abortion.”

This young woman tells a common story. An initial reaction to end the pregnancy. Fears that the baby will end everything important in life, and she also does what many people do in her situation.

LESLIE: And then I looking in Google for with clinic help me get abortions.

She turned to Google.

MADELINE SCHLENZ: Most of the time, it's a Google search, and it's a Google search on a phone, they will type in something like abortion, or abortion pill near me, or abortion clinic near me. There's different keywords that they will most of the time search for.

Madeline Schlenz is the Executive Director of Assist Pregnancy Center in Annandale, Virginia. Assist runs Metro Women’s Care, a pregnancy medical center.

SCHLENZ: You've got to be in the Google searches in order to bring people in the door.

But what happens if Google hides pregnancy centers in its search results? Or what if they show up, but Google puts a label on them that steers some women away? Those are two scenarios many pregnancy centers faced last year. And the discovery has caused a shift of strategy in how they reach women considering abortion.

ANNA EASTMAN: And so the timeline of this is the Dobbs decision was the end of June.

Anna Eastman is the Digital Team Manager at Choose Life Marketing, an agency that works with pregnancy centers across the country. About a week before the Dobbs decision, 20 Democrat lawmakers wrote a letter to Google. In the letter, they urged Google to limit the appearance of what they referred to as “anti-abortion fake clinics or so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centers’.”

EASTMAN: Around August is really when we start to see things change within Google, where they quietly started to make some of these changes and updates in the landscape.

Google responded to the letter saying the company would make changes to its abortion-related advertising. It also promised to update its Local Search services for health-related queries, including those related to abortion services.

Back in 2019 Google began requiring a disclosure for businesses who wanted to advertise for any terms related to abortion. The disclosure requires organizations to certify that they either provide or do not provide abortions. Since Dobbs though, Google has moved these disclosures to the top of its ads. They also increased the text size and made it darker.

SCHLENZ: The ads are the first thing that people see. And so the goal is to be the first thing that someone sees and clicks on it.

What does a woman searching for an abortion clinic in Annandale, Virginia see in the Ads now?

SCHLENZ: What we found is that now—and it's only on our paid ads—we now have this disclaimer that runs across the top that says either or, for us, it says does not provide abortions. I don't see that chiropractors have to be I have a disclaimer that says, may or may not prescribe meds, but with us, we have to have this disclaimer.

Disclaimers on ads are one thing, but there are also problems with pregnancy centers even showing up in the Google Business Profile. That’s the spot just under the Ads with the word “Places.” It has a link to the business website, contact information, and a map to show you how to get there.

SCHLENZ: Right now. The preset on Google is only show an abortion clinic Yeah, we used to show up in that space. That was one of the changes that they've rolled out since the Dobbs decision.

So they used to, but now they don’t. Some pro-abortion groups argue they shouldn’t. Should a pregnancy center show up in a search for an abortion clinic? Should a Greek diner show up in a Mexican restaurant Google search?

SCHLENZ: I think I can understand that if somebody is looking for something that they would want only that to come up. I also know that when I look for things, other things come up. And I don't then ask Google to place a disclaimer on that, or to give me a better search. I realize that's how this works. That's how advertising works.

To find clients, pregnancy centers have had to change their marketing paradigms. Shlenz says the marketing plan for Metro Women’s Care now has to involve more than just paid Google ads:

SCHLENZ: We have a Facebook marketing campaign, we have an Instagram marketing campaign, and while we don't have necessarily anti abortion, pro life ads on there, we do want to be something that catches girls eyes, and name recognition. So it's a different way of marketing where we're just trying to get in front of people's faces. You have to have so many impressions in order to make a conversion.

Not a “conversion” in a spiritual sense. In digital marketing a conversion is when someone takes an action on the Metro Women’s care website. For example, they fill out a form or request an appointment. But, what will women see when they get to Metro’s Website?

SCHLENZ: The website says abortion consultation in the greater Virginia, DC and Maryland area.

That language: “Abortion Consultation” is new on Metro’s website since the Dobbs decision. But is it right for a pregnancy center to use the language of abortion in its marketing? For Schlenz, the short answer is yes—if they actually offer it.

SCHLENZ: We are a pregnancy Medical Center with a resource arm. But I have to put myself in their shoes and realize this is a medical decision for them. So then we're going to speak medical language at them, including the term consultation.

Diversified and discerning marketing is part of the new approach, but it also requires an understanding of Google algorithms—or what it takes to get to the top of a Google search.

SCHLENZ: One of the strategies is to have new information on the website, because Google loves new. And so we constantly have new data and new things on our website.

On March 2nd, Metro Women’s Care threw a baby shower for one of its clients.

SOUND: [BABY SHOWER]

As they celebrate, the battle between Google and pregnancy centers continues. In November of last year, Democrat lawmakers sent another letter to Google. While appreciative of the company's new refinement tool for searches, they urged Google to make even more changes. The company has yet to respond.

SCHLENZ: I would love for a response from somebody on the other side to say, why are you doing this to Google, you know, and the fact of the matter is, they are getting enough pressure to feel like they have to prevent women from getting and having a choice. And we are out here saying you do have a choice. Consider us. We will love you all the way through, we will mentor you, we will support you even after you have that child. And yet women go without those services. Because they can't find us.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jeff Palomino in Annandale, Virginia.

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