According to Media Research Center, a Google search using the phrase "Donald Trump presidential race 2024" produces an expected page after page of news stories … but from liberal mainstream outlets like MSNBC, the New York Times, NPR, and CBS. MRC's Joseph Vazquez says a user will have to scroll quite a bit before getting to a Newsmax or even Fox News article.
"For 'Donald Trump,' it buried the first right-leaning source that it displayed on the 23rd page of Google search results," he reports to AFN. "Everything else preceding that is from left-leaning sources."
Similarly, for a conservative news take on Kamala Harris' campaign, Vazquez says one needs to go all the way to page 11 – and he contends hardly anyone has the patience to go that far.
"Research shows that most people do not even go past page 2 to find whatever results they're looking for in a search query," he explains. "It's just mind-boggling at this point. How many more anecdotes do we need of Google's search bias before it finally gets taken seriously?"
Related article from MRC:
Google still stacking deck, buries right-leaning news
Google has occasionally made a half-hearted attempt to deny the bias, but Vazquez argues that since they're basically the only game in town, they really don't seem to care.
"If [they] want to disprove any kind of speculation of bias, they can easily make the algorithms known and it would completely demolish all arguments," he suggests.
But why would they, he wonders. As Vazquez points out, they are having their desired influence on American elections. "Google has the ability to influence millions of voters," he acknowledges. "So, you can imagine in hotly contested swing states it's going to have an influence on the way that people may make a decision when they go to the polls."
The RealClearPolitics average for the seven top battleground states on this date (Oct. 16) shows Trump with only a slight advantage in six of the seven.
