When it comes time to plan a holiday, the internet is an essential research tool. Whether to pick a destination, find a hotel or identify the local sites on and off the beaten path, online content is essential to helping most of us make these plans. And that's why it is so essential that popular tourist destinations, and those hoping to attract more visitors, have high quality content online.

A new research paper from Oxford Economics shows just how critical that online content is for tourism destinations across Southern Europe. Consumers increasingly turn to and trust what they find online with over 60 percent of consumers seek information online from websites and social media making these sources more trusted than traditional media and personal recommendations. In fact, 56 percent of tourism revenue in the EU is now researched or booked online, an increase from 43 percent since 2012.

Since Oxford Economics’ initial research, many tourism destinations have improved their bookings, revenue and job growth by increasing the amount of online content available. For example, more than 180,000 and 90,000 new jobs have been created in Italy and Spain respectively due to improvements in online content.

Cultural content is a key component of what potential tourists are looking for when planning a holiday. Tourism-related searches have grown by about 45 percent since 2010. Across southern Europe, 23 percent of tourism searches are culture-related including for music, arts and festivals, historic sites and museums. And for many of the most lucrative source markets like the U.S., these cultural searches are even higher than some European countries where mass market sun and beach holidays remain important.

Oxford Economics’ research shows that not only are online resources essential research and booking channels for tourism, but that there remains a gap between the amount of online content from Southern Europe and the potential demand from source markets. Hundreds of thousands of new jobs could be created by investing in more online content.

Google is working with partners across these markets to encourage more tourism businesses and cultural organizations to improve their online content to help capture this potential increase in visitors. Our Grow Greek Tourism Online program has helped tens of thousands of Greek tourist destinations get online and improve their web presence. We trained Online Advisors who provide face to face training for businesses in more than eighty cities across Greece. We’ve also worked with 234 cultural partners in these countries, making cultural heritage like the Acropolis Museum in Athens, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid more accessible to tourists and locals through Google Arts and Culture.

Because everyone deserves the benefits of the best digital technology to help them grow their business, but not everyone has the skills they need, Google launched an ambitious training programme across Europe. We've now reached over 3m Europeans, the EU recognised our contribution with the EU Digital Skills Award, and many of those who spent time on the training are seeing real impact. 

Here's a typical example:

Giuseppe Di Pasquale’s is the owner of Le Zagare di Vendicari, an agriturismo business in Sicily. Giuseppe wanted to grow his business online but lacked the skills to make that happen. He took up training through Eccellenze in Digitale, our Italian digital skills platform, and has now applied what he learned to his business. He’s seen visits to his site increase by 40% and doubled his bookings.

Giuseppe’s story is just one of over 3 million European graduates of our programme. Our training aimed to help those who could put it to work immediately to make a difference - students, small business owners, people who were not in education, employment or other training - because we know that businesses with the right digital skills are growing faster, creating more jobs and exports and making an important contribution to their countries.

Over the last 2.5 years, we have worked with partners across Europe to achieve scale and impact, from the Ministry of Labour and other partners to train young unemployed people through Crescere in Digitale in Italy, partnering with Bertelsmann and Udacity to deliver 13,000 Android nanodegree scholarships, to developing new curriculum with The Good Things Foundation in the UK, and many dedicated Training partners who deliver the course content week after week.  Training ran online and in hundreds of 'in person' sessions, and was tailored to the most pressing needs in each country, youth unemployment in Spain, digital exports in Germany, small businesses and youth in Italy.

We commissioned Ipsos to survey our training alumni to see how the training has helped them to grow their careers and businesses and found fantastic results.

Ipsos found that 79% of SMBs trained were more confident using digital tools to run their business. And half the students trained feel more confident in their professional future.

69% of small businesses trained changed at least one aspect of how they run their business online. The top five included optimising websites for mobile, for search and for social media, as well as using website analytics and developing better site content. In fact, 49% of SMEs felt the training helped them get ahead of the competition.

Sylwia Kempa raised her confidence and got a promotion as a result of the training she received through Internetowe Rewolucje, our Polish digital skills program. She was promoted to Content Marketing Manager at the agency where she worked - responsible for overseeing online campaigns and the agency’s expansion in local and international markets. “Taking part in Internetowe Rewolucje assured me that choosing to develop my digital skills was the best decision I could make,” says Sylwia. “I now have the qualification to turn my passion into a career.”

So people and businesses are improving their confidence, boosting their skills and making changes that grow careers and businesses faster and create new jobs. Over a half of SMEs noticed a positive change in business results within 14 weeks after the training. They’re winning new customers, increasing sales and profits.  And vitally, particularly in countries where youth unemployment is a big issue, 18% of students trained found a job, started their own business or started to work freelance.

Because everyone deserves the benefits of the best digital technology to help them grow their business, but not everyone has the skills they need, Google launched an ambitious training programme across Europe. We've now reached over 3m Europeans, the EU recognised our contribution with the EU Digital Skills Award, and many of those who spent time on the training are seeing real impact. 

Here's a typical example:

Giuseppe Di Pasquale’s is the owner of Le Zagare di Vendicari, an agriturismo business in Sicily. Giuseppe wanted to grow his business online but lacked the skills to make that happen. He took up training through Eccellenze in Digitale, our Italian digital skills platform, and has now applied what he learned to his business. He’s seen visits to his site increase by 40% and doubled his bookings.

Giuseppe’s story is just one of over 3 million European graduates of our programme. Our training aimed to help those who could put it to work immediately to make a difference - students, small business owners, people who were not in education, employment or other training - because we know that businesses with the right digital skills are growing faster, creating more jobs and exports and making an important contribution to their countries.

Over the last 2.5 years, we have worked with partners across Europe to achieve scale and impact, from the Ministry of Labour and other partners to train young unemployed people through Crescere in Digitale in Italy, partnering with Bertelsmann and Udacity to deliver 13,000 Android nanodegree scholarships, to developing new curriculum with The Good Things Foundation in the UK, and many dedicated Training partners who deliver the course content week after week.  Training ran online and in hundreds of 'in person' sessions, and was tailored to the most pressing needs in each country, youth unemployment in Spain, digital exports in Germany, small businesses and youth in Italy.

We commissioned Ipsos to survey our training alumni to see how the training has helped them to grow their careers and businesses and found fantastic results.

Ipsos found that 79% of SMBs trained were more confident using digital tools to run their business. And half the students trained feel more confident in their professional future.

69% of small businesses trained changed at least one aspect of how they run their business online. The top five included optimising websites for mobile, for search and for social media, as well as using website analytics and developing better site content. In fact, 49% of SMEs felt the training helped them get ahead of the competition.

Sylwia Kempa raised her confidence and got a promotion as a result of the training she received through Internetowe Rewolucje, our Polish digital skills program. She was promoted to Content Marketing Manager at the agency where she worked - responsible for overseeing online campaigns and the agency’s expansion in local and international markets. “Taking part in Internetowe Rewolucje assured me that choosing to develop my digital skills was the best decision I could make,” says Sylwia. “I now have the qualification to turn my passion into a career.”

So people and businesses are improving their confidence, boosting their skills and making changes that grow careers and businesses faster and create new jobs. Over a half of SMEs noticed a positive change in business results within 14 weeks after the training. They’re winning new customers, increasing sales and profits.  And vitally, particularly in countries where youth unemployment is a big issue, 18% of students trained found a job, started their own business or started to work freelance.

Editor’s Note: This post appeared as an op-ed in the Financial Times earlier today.

Terrorism is an attack on open societies, and addressing the threat posed by violence and hate is a critical challenge for us all. Google and YouTube are committed to being part of the solution. We are working with government, law enforcement and civil society groups to tackle the problem of violent extremism online. There should be no place for terrorist content on our services.

While we and others have worked for years to identify and remove content that violates our policies, the uncomfortable truth is that we, as an industry, must acknowledge that more needs to be done. Now.

We have thousands of people around the world who review and counter abuse of our platforms. Our engineers have developed technology to prevent re-uploads of known terrorist content using image-matching technology. We have invested in systems that use content-based signals to help identify new videos for removal. And we have developed partnerships with expert groups, counter-extremism agencies, and the other technology companies to help inform and strengthen our efforts.

Today, we are pledging to take four additional steps.

First, we are increasing our use of technology to help identify extremist and terrorism-related videos. This can be challenging: a video of a terrorist attack may be informative news reporting if broadcast by the BBC, or glorification of violence if uploaded in a different context by a different user. We have used video analysis models to find and assess more than 50 per cent of the terrorism-related content we have removed over the past six months. We will now devote more engineering resources to apply our most advanced machine learning research to train new “content classifiers” to help us more quickly identify and remove extremist and terrorism-related content.

Second, because technology alone is not a silver bullet, we will greatly increase the number of independent experts in YouTube’s Trusted Flagger programme. Machines can help identify problematic videos, but human experts still play a role in nuanced decisions about the line between violent propaganda and religious or newsworthy speech. While many user flags can be inaccurate, Trusted Flagger reports are accurate over 90 per cent of the time and help us scale our efforts and identify emerging areas of concern. We will expand this programme by adding 50 expert NGOs to the 63 organisations who are already part of the programme, and we will support them with operational grants. This allows us to benefit from the expertise of specialised organisations working on issues like hate speech, self-harm, and terrorism. We will also expand our work with counter-extremist groups to help identify content that may be being used to radicalise and recruit extremists.

Third, we will be taking a tougher stance on videos that do not clearly violate our policies — for example, videos that contain inflammatory religious or supremacist content. In future these will appear behind an interstitial warning and they will not be monetised, recommended or eligible for comments or user endorsements. That means these videos will have less engagement and be harder to find. We think this strikes the right balance between free expression and access to information without promoting extremely offensive viewpoints.

Finally, YouTube will expand its role in counter-radicalisation efforts. Building on our successful Creators for Change programme promoting YouTube voices against hate and radicalisation, we are working with Jigsaw to implement the “Redirect Method” more broadly across Europe. This promising approach harnesses the power of targeted online advertising to reach potential Isis recruits, and redirects them towards anti-terrorist videos that can change their minds about joining. In previous deployments of this system, potential recruits have clicked through on the ads at an unusually high rate, and watched over half a million minutes of video content that debunks terrorist recruiting messages.

We have also recently committed to working with industry colleagues—including Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter—to establish an international forum to share and develop technology and support smaller companies and accelerate our joint efforts to tackle terrorism online.

Collectively, these changes will make a difference. And we’ll keep working on the problem until we get the balance right. Extremists and terrorists seek to attack and erode not just our security, but also our values; the very things that make our societies open and free. We must not let them. Together, we can build lasting solutions that address the threats to our security and our freedoms. It is a sweeping and complex challenge. We are committed to playing our part.