Breitbart Blasts Google for ‘Election Interference,’ Provides Evidence

August 3rd, 2020 1:03 PM

Breitbart claimed that the internet’s most popular search engine is using multiple tactics to rig the upcoming election.

Breitbart released a damning report full of graphs and hard data condemning Google for interfering with conservative news sources. Breitbart also reported that the search engine giant is protecting presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden. The article contended that the platform has “blacklisted” conservative media sites, “Purging Breitbart Content from Search Results Since the 2016 Election” and that it “Killed All Search Traffic to Breitbart for Joe Biden and Joe Biden-related Searches.”

Breitbart argued that Google was directly interfering with the course of history in order to ensure, as Google VP for Global Affairs Kent Walker commented, that the rise of populist conservative leaders like Trump would turn out to be a “blip” or “hiccup” in the march of history towards progress.

The piece headlined “Election Interference: Google Purges Breitbart from Search Results” also made the scathing insinuation  that Google has “Killed” search Traffic to Breitbart about Biden:

“After Google’s May core search update on or about May 5, 2020, Google search impressions and search traffic to Breitbart for “Joe Biden” and other Biden-related search terms has gone to zero. Zero. The following graph clearly illustrates the foregoing.

On May 1, Google searches for “Joe Biden” generated approximately 30,000 impressions (views, used as a metric for advertisers) for Breitbart links. After May 5, both impressions and clicks went to zero.

An SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert who spent years studying Google’s search console in particular claimed that this sort of change is unprecedented, to the point it seemed to indicate manipulation:

“‘I’ve never experienced such a wholesale removal of rank and visibility on specific concepts on a site as I have seen being applied to Breitbart,’ said the expert. ‘Removal is the key, not dropping in rank, which would be an organic devaluing. These ranks are just simply gone, overnight, while other topics have been untouched.’”

Breitbart’s takeaway was that this level of alleged election interference by American Big Tech makes “any alleged foreign interference in the 2016 election pale by comparison.” 

The last chart shared by Breitbart in this piece indicated that conservative websites in general were being deliberately selected for “suppression” and the article summarized: “Eight of the ten lowest-ranked sites (Breitbart News, Fox News, The Daily Caller, The Blaze, Reason, The Federalist, The Daily Wire, the Washington Examiner) in the chart above are conservative.”

Breitbart suggested that this data supports the narrative of “Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and of Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA),” in their belief that “search result manipulation ought to be a major subject of the Department of Justice’s antitrust investigation into Google.”

Conservatives are under attack. Contact Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) to demand that Big Tech be held accountable for these anti-competitive practices. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form.