How search engine optimization reduced Simone Biles to an ‘NFL wife’
Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history, has landed at the center of a debate around how algorithms shape internet news. Last weekend, outlets like Yahoo!Sports picked up a story with a headline referring to her as an “NFL wife.” It went viral – creating a case study in how content optimized for internet search can have unintended meanings for humans.
Biles is considered the greatest gymnast competing today. With seven gold and 11 total Olympic medals, she is tied for second place in the historical ranks of the Games’ women gymnasts, and she has five elements named for her in the women’s artistic gymnastics (WAG) Code of Points. It’s enough to earn her a reputation as the “GOAT” – greatest of all time – among gymnastic fans and followers.
On Saturday, Biles posted on Instagram that she had been hospitalized for “one of, if not the scariest experience of my life,” and had come close to dying.
Sports website GridIronHeroics covered her experience under the headline, “NFL Wife Simone Biles Nearly Passes Away, Hospital Photos Released – What We Know.” The story was picked up by news aggregators including NewsBreak, before finding a wider audience.
READ MORE: When aggregation goes bad
The internet – as always – reacted.
“That’s the title we’re going with?” asked TheSports(Ish) on TikTok. Other takes were more specific, suggesting the choice to describe Biles only by her status as a wife was disrespectful and rooted in misogyny.
The story’s author, McQuade Warnold, publicly apologized Wednesday in a series of three posts on Threads.
“During the off-season we often times find any topics to write about that is even remotely correlated with the NFL,” he wrote. “The SEO keyword I used for that article was NFL.”
What is Search Engine Optimization?
SEO – search engine optimization – is a system of adding keywords and phrases, in specific orders, to webpages and headlines, so they will be picked up by search engines and pushed to the intended audience. Search engines like Google “crawl” through websites to decide what to show in search results and the order to show them in.
It is likely technically correct that having the term “NFL” in a headline would result in more people seeing it. Google’s trends data shows that, on the day Biles went into the hospital and after the article was posted, “NFL” was a more-searched term than “Simone Biles” and “gymnastics.” And in an online economy based on clicks, sites have an incentive to describe the events of the day in a way that makes them more relevant to their target audiences.
That notion didn’t exactly settle the internet. Sophia Bush, known for her role in One Tree Hill and the partner of a World Cup and Olympic champion soccer player, called the incident “an indictment” of the algorithm.
Google’s SEO guidelines suggest prioritizing “people-first content,” that is, “helpful, reliable information that’s created to benefit people, and not content that’s created to manipulate search engine rankings.” A phrase that works well for an algorithm can create unintentional judgments, meanings or value statements.
“I think SEO is the cover-up for an editorial choice that was made that, unfortunately, wasn’t the best,” said Charlsie Niemiec, a brand and editorial strategist who has worked on online campaigns for 15 years. “But I can’t speak to his intentions, if they were intentionally trying to rage-bait or get extra clicks with a sexist headline.”
Olympians’ husbands in media
This is not the first time editorial choices to describe female Olympians by their marital status have been publicly criticized.
In 2017, London-based The Times captioned a photo of two married Olympic cyclists at Wimbledon as “Cyclist Jason Kenny was with his pregnant wife Laura.” Dame Laura Kenny had been given an award by the Queen for her services to cycling just months before and, at the time, held the record as the first British woman to win three Olympic golds. She won her fifth in 2021, the world record for a female cyclist.
In 2016, the Chicago Tribune posted “Wife of a Bears’ lineman wins a bronze medal today in Rio Olympics” on X, referring to U.S. National Shooting Championship and ISSF World Cup gold medalist and three-time Olympian Corey Cogdell.
In both cases, the internet rapidly noted that the women deserved independent recognition of their achievements.
Warnold said he hadn’t considered how the phrasing could be considered disrespectful.
“I have realized how this was perceived and I understand it was insensitive,” he wrote. “ I was genuinely just thinking in the context of my NFL page.”
He finished: “I realize now I should have done better. I apologize.”
Warnold has not responded to Straight Arrow’s request for comment. GridIron Heroics changed the headline of the original article on its site, and added a note that “We’ve learned from this and will do better next time.” It also posted a follow-up article Monday, focusing on Biles’ experience of her medical ordeal.
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
