Google is actively assisting Vice President Kamala Harris in maintaining her media honeymoon by keeping users in the dark about her radical policy views, including her support for abolishing ICE and threatening to end private health insurance, a new MRC Free Speech America study found.
The study revealed a staggering bias in Google’s favoring of left-leaning media by a nearly 10:1 margin in both Google Search and the Google News tab. MRC conducted the searches on Aug. 21, covering four search prompts across both Google Search and the Google News tab. These findings raise serious concerns about Google’s influence on the outcome of the 2024 election, echoing its interference in the 2022 midterm elections.
MRC completed the searches using a clean environment, discovering that Google has promoted left-leaning media sites at a shocking 17:2 ratio in Google Search results. The bias was equally pronounced in the Google News tab for search results, where left-leaning outlets appeared at a 19:2 ratio. This is a nearly 10:1 biased ratio on each tab.
MRC used the media bias chart by AllSides to determine the ideological leaning of the outlets featured in Google’s search results. Among the 19 media outlets that received favorable placements in the Google News tab results were The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, Politico, Slate, Vox and The Guardian. In contrast, only three right-leaning media outlets — The Federalist, New York Post and The Washington Times — were scarcely featured.
This new study followed the release of a Media Research Center/McLaughlin & Associates survey showing that between 71 and 86 percent of Democratic and Independent Biden voters are unaware of Harris’s previous support for radical policies.
Here are the key findings:
MRC prompted Google Search and the Google News tab separately with four queries each (eight in total) related to Harris’s policies to analyze which media outlets Google props up in its search results: “Kamala Harris policies,” “Kamala Harris policy agenda,” “Media ignoring Kamala Harris policies” and “Media ignoring Kamala Harris policy agenda.” These queries consistently produced biased results.
Google favored leftist media outlets at a 17:2 in Google Search and a 19:2 ratio in Google News across all four queries. MRC found that American voters using Google to search for her policies are likely to be inundated with content from outlets within the left spectrum as seen in the AllSides media bias chart. These findings demonstrate Google’s bias in favor of the left.
Google buried right-leaning media outlets in six out of the eight Google searches performed. For the searches “Kamala Harris policies,” “Kamala Harris policy agenda” and “Media ignoring Kamala Harris policy agenda” in both a general Google Search and Google News tab search (six total), Google completely omitted right-leaning media outlets.
Leftist news shared by Google included a BBC piece that projected what a Harris administration would look like based on her record as a politician. In BBC’s attempt at puffery, the media outlet did at least concede that Harris has “yet to release a comprehensive platform.”
Google only displayed four articles from right-leaning media outlets out of a total of 40 results in both Google Search and News tab searches. Out of this total, only four came from right-leaning media outlets: The Washington Times (appeared twice), The Federalist and New York Post. (Note: The outlets not categorized by AllSides were excluded from this report, more about this in the methodology).
Notably, Google listed The Washington Times at least twice in the “Media ignoring Kamala Harris policies” results in both the general Google Search and Google News tab searches. Written by columnist Tim Murtaugh, the opinion piece blasted the legacy media for shilling for the Harris candidacy.
Using the same search query in both Google Search and Google News tabs, Google featured a column by The Federalist in which columnist Eddie Scarry dissected why Harris and the media “don’t want to talk policy.” There is none, Scarry wrote.
Google only displayed one other right-leaning media piece in the Google News search of “Media ignoring Kamala Harris policies.” It was a New York Post article covering the appearance of Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) in Chicago. While there, Donalds rebuked Harris for lacking a policy agenda.
Google also directed MRC to Harris-affiliated content in Google Search queries. The prompt “Kamala Harris policies” in a Google Search yielded eight results, including her campaign site and her official White House biography page. Similarly, the “Kamala Harris policy agenda” prompt directed MRC to her White House page and her campaign’s page attacking Project 2025. These sites, of course, featured exclusively pro-Harris content. Notably, Harris’s campaign website does not even list any of her policy proposals.
Previous MRC studies unveiled that Google promoted the campaign website of President Joe Biden while burying that of former President Donald Trump. A separate MRC study found evidence of Google propping up the Biden campaign website a day after Biden ordered his X followers to “Google Project 2025.”
This new MRC study suggests that Americans using Google to search for information about Harris’s policies might be left in the dark about her past endorsement of these controversial policies.
The almost 10:1 ratio is important because Google wields a 92 percent market share, making it the most used search engine globally. Not only that but search engine optimization expert Brian Dean has noted that the higher a search result appears in Google Search results, the more likely it is that users will click on a particular result. Furthermore, according to search engine optimization company Backlinko, the first result of Google search results gets 27.6 percent of all clicks and has a 10x likelihood to be selected when compared to the top 10 results. Only 2.4 percent of users click on the 10th result on the page, and it only gets worse from there.
This new Google study followed the release of an MRC study showing that the legacy media coverage of Harris is 84 percent positive, in stark contrast to the 89 percent negative coverage of former President Donald Trump.
Methodology: MRC Free Speech America developed an algorithm to automate the search process in a clean environment, ensuring that results were not influenced by prior search history or tracking cookies.
On Aug. 21, MRC researchers analyzed the results for the queries following: “Kamala Harris policies,” “Kamala Harris policy agenda,” “Media ignoring Kamala Harris policies” and “Media ignoring Kamala Harris policy agenda.”
The searches produced a total of 40 links across both Google Search and Google News. MRC organized these links in a spreadsheet and categorized them according to their bias as seen in the AllSides Media Bias Chart.
Outlets and pages not categorized by AllSides were excluded from the ratio analysis, as MRC does not classify outlets by bias on its own.
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