Is
Google manipulating its algorithm to prioritize left-leaning news
outlets in their coverage of President Trump? It sure looks that way
based on recent search results for news on the president.
Conservatives
and Trump supporters have for the last several years questioned
whether Google was deprioritizing conservative news sites, hiding
them from users who utilize their search engine. Google has
maintained that all outlets are treated fairly, but nevertheless,
conservative sites have reported reduced search traffic and, in the
case of Google-owned YouTube, content
creators have been banned and demonetized. Google's
high-profile firing of conservative James Damore, purportedly
over his conservative political views, only reinforces the idea that
Google is picking winners and losers.
To
test the premise, I performed a Google
search for "Trump" using the search engine's
"News" tab and analyzed the results using Sharyl
Attkisson's media bias chart.
I
expected to see some skewing of the results based on my extensive
experience with Google, but I was not prepared for the blatant
prioritization of left-leaning and anti-Trump media outlets. Looking
at the first page of search results, I discovered that CNN was the
big winner, scoring two of the first ten results. Other left-leaning
sites that appeared on the first page were CBS, The
Atlantic, CNBC, The
New Yorker, Politico, Reuters, and USA
Today (the last two outlets on this list
could arguably be considered more centrist than the others).
Not
a single right-leaning site appeared on the first page of search
results.
But
it got much, much worse when I analyzed the first 100 items that
Google returned in a search for news on "Trump."
CNN,
by a wide margin, appeared most frequently, with nearly twice as
many results returned as the second-place finisher, The
Washington Post. Other left-leaning outlets
also fared well, including NBC, CNBC, The
Atlantic, and Politico. The only right-leaning sites to
appear in the top 100 were The
Wall Street Journal and Fox News with 3 and
2 results respectively.
PJ
Media did not appear in the first 100 results, nor did National
Review, The
Weekly Standard, Breitbart, The Blaze, The Daily Wire, Hot
Air, Townhall, Red State, or any other conservative-leaning sites
except the two listed above.
Here
are the sites that appeared most frequently in the top 100 results.
Google search results for "Trump."
(Image credit: PJ Media)
As
you can see, CNN has a disproportionate number of articles returned
when searching for "Trump" — nearly 29 percent of the total. In
fact, left-leaning sites comprised 96 percent of the total results.
Google search results for "Trump."
(Image credit: PJ Media)
I
performed the search a multiple times using different computers
(registered to different users) and Google returned similar results.
While not scientific, the results suggest a pattern of bias against
right-leaning content.
Google
is secretive about its algorithm, although the company does say that
a variety of factors — around 200 of them, according to Google — go
into how pages are ranked. In fact, a whole science has developed —
called search engine optimization (SEO) — that purports to help
sites become more visible in Google search results. Factors such as
the relevance of the topic, the design of the website, internal and
external links, and the way articles are written and formatted all
can affect a site's Google traffic. Google is constantly tweaking
their algorithm, and a website's traffic prospects can rise or fall
depending on the changes. PJ Media's Google search traffic, for
example, dropped precipitously after a May 2017 algorithm change. We
have yet to recover the lost traffic. Other conservative sites have
reported similar drops in traffic.
"Can
I Rank," an SEO company in San Francisco, also
found an anti-conservative bias in Google search results. The
company studied over 1,200 URLs that ranked highly in Google search
results for politically-charged keywords like "gun control,"
"abortion," "TPP," and Black Lives Matter" and then assessed whether
there was a political slant to the articles.
"Among
our key findings were that top search results were almost 40%
more likely to contain pages with a 'Left' or 'Far Left'
slant than they were pages from the right," Can I Rank found.
"Moreover, 16% of political keywords contained no right-leaning
pages at all within the first page of results."
They
sampled 2,000 results and found that searchers are 39 percent more
likely to be presented with left-leaning articles.
For
some keywords, the disparity was even more pronounced. Someone
searching for "Republican platform," for example, would see the
official text of the platform followed by seven left-leaning results
that were critical of the platform.
The
company's research turned up no right-leaning sites in the top
results for keywords like “minimum wage,” “abortion,” “NAFTA,” “Iraq
war,” “campaign finance reform,” “global warming,” “marijuana
legalization,” and "TPP."
"The
proportion of results with a left-leaning
bias increased for top ranking results, which typically
receive the majority of clicks," the company found. "For
example, we found that search results denoted as demonstrating a
left or far left slant received 40% more exposure in the top 3
ranking spots than search results considered to have a right or far
right political slant."
"Our
analysis of the algorithmic metrics underpinning those rankings
suggests that factors within the Google algorithm itself may make it
easier for sites with a left-leaning or centrist viewpoint to rank
higher in Google search results compared to sites with a politically
conservative viewpoint," the report found. "Though Google would like
to portray itself as a fair and balanced arbiter of facts — a role
it has recently tried to strengthen with the launch
of a fact checking mechanism — searchers should be aware
that ranking algorithms don’t currently incorporate an assessment of
political bias or even factual accuracy," the company warned. "No
attempt is made to present multiple viewpoints on controversial
political issues, and the algorithm in its current form does not
return results equally distributed across the entire political
spectrum."
Google
denies charges that the company is manipulating the algorithm to
prioritize news from left-leaning sites. "Google does not manipulate
results," Maggie Shiels, a representative from Google's corporate
communications and public affairs, told PJM in an email. "There are
more than 200 signals taken into account when someone does a search
which include freshness of results."
"These
stories are put into clusters to organise the news and to make them
easy to search through," she said, explaining that they have "labels
like highly cited, in-depth, etc." She said her personal
search for Trump returned results from BBC, the New York
Times, CNBC, CNN, and the Wall
Street Journal. "When I click on 'view all'
I get full coverage -- I get CNN, Reuters, Axios, Washington
Examiner," she said. Following those results, she sees her
subscriptions, video from Fox and CNN, a timeline, opinion pieces,
Twitter, and "all coverage which covers a lot of different
publications and is an endless stream of stories from a wide variety
of sources."
Bloomberg
columnist Leonid Bershidsky wrote
about the problem of bias earlier this year, reacting to the
news of James Damore's treatment at Google. "Google's search
algorithms are a black
box to the public," he explains. "People inside the
company can mess with them without telling us, potentially imposing
their internal culture on millions of searchers who have no reason
and no desire to share it. This world includes Trump supporters
and Antifa
activists, creationist pastors and evolutionary biologists,
climate change deniers and people who consider them evil. It's not
up to an internet search company to try to level these differences."
"But
if that company fosters a work culture in which a certain worldview
dominates, can its products be trusted to be neutral?" he asks.
It
appears not.
My
colleague Roger L. Simon is asking the same questions. He
wrote here at PJM earlier this week that
social media companies are the most dangerous monopolies — ever.
"Facebook, Twitter, and Google are far worse than the original
monopolies like International Harvester and Standard Oil and far
more dangerous because they monopolize not just our industries but
our brains," he explained. "They control, or at least inordinately
influence, how Americans and even much of the world think."
As
more and more people turn to Google and other social media outlets
for their news, it may not be hyperbolic to suggest that the biases
inherent in human-created algorithms have the potential to affect
the fate of democracy. Certainly they can — and likely do — impact
the outcomes of elections both here and abroad. With all the talk
and hand-wringing about fake news and bad foreign actors using
social media outlets to attempt to manipulate election results, far
too little attention has been paid to power brokers like Google,
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and their ability — and perhaps
even desire — to manipulate public opinion and shape the world into
their own Silicon Valley image.
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"Is
Google manipulating its algorithm to prioritize
left-leaning news outlets in their coverage of
President Trump?"
You
mean that there was a chance that they weren't?
-
It's
worse for g00gle image searches. Today, I was
watching a documentary that featured river
otters in India taking down a crocodile! I
searched for "India otters harass alligator"
and got a photo of POTUS on the tarmac from
August 22! When I changed alligators to
crocodiles, I did get one bad photo, so here
is a river otter's protest instead, for being
disrespected:
"The presence of otters signals that a riverine
ecosystem is healthy. Credit: WildOtters [google
search India otter harrass crocodile]
Any
image search with 'White House' returns the
previous WH, as if history stopped on January
19, 2017. President Kenyatta is coming to the
WH on August 27, and the 'all' results are
from his 2014 visit, as are the images, even
with 2018 in the search terms. I continue to
use g00gle search to see how the results skew,
but, the otters...
see
more
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Google
does this with virtually any subject you can dream
up to search, one in particular is "black
unemployment." The top two talk about low black
unemployment with "but there's a catch" in the
title. The Washington Examiner is on the second
page of results, the Daily Caller on the third,
but I would bet that less than 5% of people go
past the first page of search results on nearly
any topic.
Herein
lies the biggest meddling that will take place
this November, Google search results, mainly
because it's undecided voters who find it
important to gather information on topics at the
last minute so they can figure out how or for whom
to vote.
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There's
only one way to solve this problem: smoke signals.
Going forward conservatives will have to cast
aside all forms of media communications and
technology and opt for smoke signals.
Its a legitimate, sophisticated form of
communication, and one approved by Heap Big Chief
Trump himself:
"Heap Big Chief Trump tweet'um for last time. Now
troll'um fake news palefaces with smoky signals in
big sky. Very good".
Trump's first "tweet" using the new format. It say:
"Heap Big Chief Trump eat'um crackers in bed, anger
paleface squaw Melania, who hate crumbs. Chief Trump
sleep'um on couch tonight. Very bad".
see
more
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Wow,
so the whole ‘liberals support diversity and
are against racism’ goes right out the window
if you are insulting Trump. How do you survive
with so much hatred against the American
Indian inside of you? Does Fauxahauntas know
about your feels?
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-
You
keep posting this all over PJM articles. You
are spamming.
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Yes,
you are likely unfit to serve McDonalds, let
alone your fellow man.
-
Um,
you are aware that Facebook informs users that
PJMeida is a conservative organization?
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Even
a broken clock is right twice a day.
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Is
this something 4chan can hack?
-
Quote:
As you can see, CNN has a disproportionate number
of articles returned when searching for "Trump" —
nearly 29 percent of the total.
That
clearly cannot be based on Google merely
reflecting the popularity of CNN as a news source.
Fox News is beating the socks off CNN.
And
for what it is worth, I gave up on Google's own
news service long ago. For the source of news
about the runaway bride from Atlantic, they were
clearly pushing the Chinese News Service, the
propaganda are of the Chinese government, rather
than the much better informed Atlanta papers. And
I recall at the time that it was pandering to the
Chinese dictatorship to get lucrative access to
the Chinese market.
-
Google
thinks we are stupid and inordinately
malleable
-
Hi,
You
have some great information here, but James Damore
is not conservative. You can watch interview with
him (e.g. Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin) to learn his
views. Also, his views were not conservative - his
essay was a question prompted based on feedback
requested by internal training courses he had
participated in at google.
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Doesn't
that make it worse?
He's not particularly conservative and neither
was his essay, yet he was still fired for
opinions too conservative for g00gle's
management.
-
I
don't know about now, and wouldn't doubt Google
would pull this sort of stuff, but...
In
the past Google judged search results based on the
number of links to that site. If a ton of lefty
nutballs linked chimp to an image of George W Bush
that image would show up on top when you searched
for chips. The left has been particularly insane
lately and I suspect Facebook memes play into this
sort of thing big time so Google might be somewhat
innocent and its just the left being the left.
-
If
you go back into the 90's and 2000's, you'll see
that many people have noted how left-leaning
Googles news and search results are. I.e., they've
been doing it for so long, they probably can't see
anything wrong with it.
-
True,
"do no evil" only works as a guideline if your
staff actually don't all share a Lefty view of
evil.
-
You
can set your news preferences in Google News to
not show stories from a particular outlet, but it
doesn't work. You can set it to not show results
from CNN, and it'll ignore your settings.
-
Fortunately
most conservatives and thinking Independent voters
don't search political POV on google.
Unfortunately republican congress doesn't vote how
they campaign. It will be interesting to see if
Kavanaugh gets through. Thats the final for me
after Omnibust and planned parenthood spending. I
would rather spend 2 years with the Trump veto
than vote for this RINO congress.
-
Why
is anybody still using Google for searches? Use
duckduckgo or something like that. It's probably
still biased, but at least it's not GOOG.
-
Why
has the NSA failed to cough up Bill Clinton's
wife's allegedly lost emails?
Feel
safe in the USA when Bill's wife can skirt the
NSA 100%?
I
will never forget 911 where somehow the
Pentagon itself was hit by a civilian airplane
full of civilians and only reason more damage
was not done was because of the efforts USA
citizens on board afforded the USA and the
Pentagon.
Let
that sink in
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I
just tried a little experiment, I searched “Trump”
with Duck Duck Go and got www.trump.com.
That makes some sense. I did the same with Safari
using google and got BBC, the Atlantic....
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When
I do a "google" search on my phone for FOX news,
there are always two liberal outlets with stories
about FOX that I have to scroll past to get to
FOX...every time.
-
Axios
isn't on that bias chart. Anyone have a good idea
where they stand?
-
Uh,
CNN and the rest of the corporate news media is
not liberal news.. Liberal news outlets are the
'alternative' media.
-
Ignorant
comment Canadian communist
Hammerandsickletime, you get a very slanted
view of US politics from up there in Canada
where socialism is considered centrist.
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The
first ten results on news.google.com for
Trump
CNBC - 1
CNN - 4
Politico
- 1
HuffPost - 1
WashPost - 1
USAToday - 1
CBS News - 1
The
first ten results on aljazeera.com for
Trump
(All by Al Jazeerah writers)
Topics:
John
McCain - 2
Trump-Iran - 1
Trump-Turkey - 1
Trump-China
- 1
Trump-PRC - 1
Trump's Tough week - 1
Palestinian Funding - 1
Palestian Football chief banned - 1
Venezuela - 1
Of
course, Al Jazeera has a more international focus
than most US news agencies.
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And
this is what Libs do - manipulate everything in
their favor, and then lie like hell about it when
caught. We are surprised here, how?
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Meh.
The Liberal Media has a fixation with Trump, so
they write a lot more about him. It's not Google
with their thumb on the scale. Just more liberal
BS from which to choose.
Dear God, I am defending Google. *slits own
wrists*
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Do
you think that might just because the
organizations somewhat arbitrarily tagged as
"leftist" appear to represent the oldest, most
established media outlets with readerships in
multiple media?
I
say "arbitrarily" because any scale that situates
Time Magazine to the left of Mother Jones or
characterizes Stars and Stripes as a "centrist"
publication is a little bit wonky.
-
The
Wall Street Journal's editorial pages support the
Republican establishment. Their news pages are
just as far left as the New York Times. Neither of
them supports Trump.
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It's
easy to see for yourself. Just for fun, I went to
Google search for the first time in years and
typed in RNC. The second result was wikipedia
which is he//a biased and the fourth result was an
article from the huffpost bashing the RNC.
I
began seeing that pattern in their search results
a long time ago and never went back. If you use
Google, you are an idiot or gullible.
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They’re
just noticing this now? This has been a thing for
going on 3 years.
-
-
Reckoning
in RL incomming... so, duck? Maybe? Idk. Bubbles
pop. It's just what they do. Mayby that's all they
can do.
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Why
say "left-leaning"? Are you reluctant to call
these media entities what they are?
Why
talk in terms of an algorithm as if it is some
thing that can be manipulated, as if it were a
non-biased thing to begin with? The algorithm is
the instantiation of what google executives
believe. It is their will in the form of computer
instructions.
-
-
Google's
motto is "Don't Be Evil" to remind themselves to
quite being evil all the damn time!! But they
always are.
-
Social
networks distribute information just as power
company distributes electricity. They must be
regulated as a public utility.
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If
ever there was a need for a special prosecutor
into colusion and meddling with elections 🙄
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We
all know this, however, sheep still use it.
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I
Googled puppy dogs, kittens and unicorns, and i
got back results for Hilly Beans, Pelosi and
Fauxcahontas.
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-
I've
noticed this too. Google should be called out on
their bias. Maybe laws are needed so the public
has a better idea how they skew search results
(more transparency)? Otherwise, many people assume
that the results are "natural". It's essentially
false-advertising.
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-
Sounds
like Google is interfering in the election.
