Last week, MRC researchers found that Google buried US-based right-leaning news outlets on the 14th page of search results. It appears that the tech giant is still at it, as it continues to hide right-leaning outlets in the depths of search results.
On Oct. 8, MRC researchers once again used AllSides “right” and “left” bias classifications and found that Google search results for “kamala harris presidential race 2024” and “donald trump presidential race 2024” were stuffed with leftist, legacy media sources. The results featured outlets like CNN and The New York Times as well as publications of leftist billionaires like Jeff Bezos’s The Washington Post and Marc Benioff’s Time. When searching for the aforementioned Harris search prompt, researchers did not find any U.S.-based media outlets that AllSides rates as “lean-right” or "right" until Fox News appeared as the first result on page 11 of Google search results. Likewise, Google buried the first U.S.-based “lean right” or “right” result for the aforementioned Trump prompt as the sixth result on the 23rd page, as Google featured a Fox News video in this spot.
Although one “lean right” video appeared in the search results for the Trump prompt, Google outrageously did not display a single “right” or “lean right” news article from a U.S.-based source anywhere in the tech giant’s search results, which ran out after 26 pages.
This overt leftist bias is especially concerning considering that according to a November 2023 Pew Research survey, a rising number of American adults receive their news from search. The study found that 15 percent of U.S. adults prefer to get their news from search engines, which is up from 13 percent in 2022, and 11 percent in 2021.
Google did display one U.K.-based “lean right” website, The Telegraph, in its search results for the Harris prompt. However, it was also buried, not appearing until page 6 of the search results. The Telegraph also appeared near the bottom of the first page of search results for the Trump prompt.
Previous MRC Free Speech America studies have shown similar results.
A September study revealed that users trying to find Trump’s campaign website had to wade through a gauntlet of leftist articles before reaching it. Following the release of the MRC study, Trump condemned Google’s behavior in a post on Truth Social, vowing legal action in a potential second administration. “It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump wrote. He went on to refer to Google’s behavior as “ILLEGAL ACTIVITY” and promised to prosecute their election interference when he takes office.
Google, on the other hand, absurdly tried to dismiss the study, claiming that the MRC study used a “rare search term on a single day several weeks ago” in an attempt to portray the results as nonrepresentative.
But the MRC has conducted 22 studies on Google’s election-related search bias (19 at the time of Google’s dismissive response) and documented the search giant’s long history of election interference dating back to 2008.
For example, Google buried Trump’s campaign website so far down that it did not appear on the first page of results during the Republican National Convention and ahead of the July presidential debate between Trump and Biden. The search giant also did this while Trump shortly after a guilty verdict following Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s politicized prosecution of him.
This is just one of a myriad of ways that Google has interfered in American elections on behalf of its favored candidates. In fact, Google meddled in American elections no fewer than 41 times from 2008 to 2024, including by burying 83 percent of the Republican campaign websites for the most competitive Senate races during the 2022 midterm elections.
Methodology
For this report, MRC Free Speech America analyzed the Oct. 8 Google search results of the innocuous words “donald trump presidential race 2024” and “kamala harris presidential race 2024.” MRC Free Speech America used a private window utilizing the Brave privacy browser to analyze Google search results to limit the influence of prior search history and tracking cookies. MRC Free Speech America also utilized the AllSides media bias chart as a gauge to determine which outlets are “right” and “lean right.” AllSides notes it has a “patent on rating bias and use[s] multiple methodologies,” not a homogenous group or an algorithm. “Our methods are: Blind Bias Surveys of Americans, Editorial Reviews by a multipartisan team of panelists who look for common types of media bias, independent reviews, and third-party data.”
Readers should be aware that this report only uses the AllSides list to analyze ratings of outlets considered by AllSides to be “right” and “lean right” and does not necessarily reflect MRC’s characterizations of these outlets.
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