According to the Media Research Center, Google is using its usual tricks in the election: According to MRC research, when searching for “presidential election 2024,” Joe Biden’s campaign website appears at the top of the results, while Donald Trump’s campaign website doesn’t appear on the first page.
MRC is Reports As the 2024 presidential election heats up, concerns are growing about the role of tech giants in shaping public opinion and access to information. In a recent study, MRC claimed to have found evidence of bias in Google search results, which could affect the visibility of presidential candidates’ campaign websites.
The MRC study, conducted just days before tonight’s highly-anticipated presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, uncovered striking differences in how Google displays search results for different candidates. When searching for the candidates’ names along with “election 2024,” researchers found that President Biden’s campaign website appeared as the top result, while former President Trump’s website didn’t appear on the first page of results at all.
The discrepancy has led to allegations of election interference: MRC president Brent Bozell said, “Google is blatantly interfering in the 2024 election.” The organization’s findings suggest the problem extends beyond these two candidates, and that pro-life candidates appear to be penalized in search rankings.
The study used two sets of search queries: the first set focused on individual candidates, and the second set looked at the results of party-specific searches. In both cases, the researchers found significant differences in the ranking of various candidate websites.
MRC’s results for party-specific searches were similarly worrying: A search for “Republican presidential campaign websites” brought up Trump’s campaign site 39th out of 40 results, while a similar search for Democratic candidates brought up Biden’s website prominently at the top.
In the digital age, the importance of search result rankings cannot be overstated. Google holds approximately 92% of the global market share in the search engine space, and the visibility of information on its platform can have a major impact on public perception and access to campaign resources.
Research from search engine optimization expert Brian Dean highlights this point, revealing that the top results in Google searches receive 27.6% of all clicks, with lower-ranking results receiving dramatically fewer clicks. This data suggests that the placement of campaign websites in search results can have a significant impact on a candidate’s online visibility and, ultimately, the reach of their campaign.
Notably, this is not the first time Google has come under scrutiny for its potential influence on elections. The MRC has documented 41 cases of suspected election interference by Google since 2008. The frequency and intensity of these incidents have reportedly increased in recent years. Google is not new to manipulating search results: Breitbart News has documented in detail how Google suppressed Breitbart itself in the months leading up to the 2020 election. Searches for the exact headline often return no links to Breitbart News.
Meanwhile, Google has consistently maintained that its search algorithms are politically unbiased and designed to provide users with the most relevant and useful information. But the opacity of these algorithms and their significant impact on information dissemination continue to raise questions about the responsibility and power of technology companies in the democratic process.
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Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering free speech and online censorship.
