One of the Media Research Center’s longtime attack lines in its war on Google is to loudly accuse it of purportedly suppressing the websites of Republican candidates — while never explaining how the search terms it uses should have generated the results it demanded, raising the question of whether the MRC concocted those search terms specifically to play Google gotcha. Unsurprisingly, the MRC is continuing that narrative. Michael Morris and Gabriela Pariseau wrote in a June 4 post:
Google continues to bury former President Donald Trump’s campaign website after a Manhattan, New York jury came down with a guilty verdict in the dubious case filed by George Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg.
MRC Free Speech America analyzed Google search results for the eight presidential candidates still in the race Friday. Despite his donation website crashing due to the overwhelming number of visitors following the verdict Thursday, former President Trump was the only candidate whose campaign website did not appear on the first page of search results a day later. All seven other candidates’ websites, including those of President Joe Biden and even Robert F. Kennedy Jr, appeared in the first 10 results when researchers searched for each candidate’s name and the phrase “presidential race 2024.”
“There you go again,” said MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Director Michael Morris. “Google is up to its old censorship antics in an all-important election season. Just like it did in 2022, burying Republican campaign websites in key Senate races, burying its biggest critics and burying the GOP candidate in the Georgia runoff races, Google is burying the leading GOP challenger in the 2024 presidential race from the first page of results.”
[…]Google’s latest episode of election interference is especially damning. Both WinRed and donaldjtrump.com were nowhere to be found on the first page of Google Search results even as Trump’s donation page on WinRed was experiencing use overload.
While one might have expected the news of Trump’s guilty conviction last Thursday to flood Google Search results with anything but his website, only three of the top ten results were related to the verdict. The other seven included Trump’s Wikipedia page, the 2024 presidential election Ballotpedia page and various older news articles introducing the candidates.
President Biden and Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign websites appeared fourth in individual search results. Constitution Party candidate Randall Terry’s website similarly appeared fourth.
This was the metholodogy:
For this report, MRC Free Speech America analyzed the May 31 Google search results of “joe biden presidential race 2024,” “marianne williamson presidential race 2024,” “donald trump presidential race 2024,” “robert f. kennedy jr. presidential race 2024,” “jill stein presidential race 2024,” “cornel west presidential race 2024,” “randall terry presidential race 2024,” and “chase oliver presidential race 2024.” MRC Free Speech America created an algorithm to automate this process in a clean environment. A “clean environment” allows for organic search to populate results without the influence of prior search history and tracking cookies.
To determine bias, our researchers looked at Google’s results and recorded the rank(s) of each candidate’s campaign website on the first page of results.
Pariseau did not explain why those particular search terms were chosen, why someone specifically searching for a candidate’s website would use that cumbersome search term, why the placement of campaign websites is the only relevant measure, or why she expects that search results for leading candidates like Biden and Trump should be exactly the same as those for fringe candidates like Kennedy or Terry.
Apparently in need of more ref-working content before the first presidential debate, Morris and Pariseau played the same gotcha game in a June 26 post:
Google is still at it. Just two days before the widely anticipated presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the tech giant buried Trump’s campaign website in its search results. But Biden’s appears at the very top for voters looking for information about him.
“Google is blatantly interfering in the 2024 election,” said MRC President Brent Bozell.
MRC Free Speech America uncovered proof of Google’s bias and censorship through two separate sets of search queries. First, MRC researchers analyzed the Google Search results for the six presidential candidates still in the race Tuesday. When searching for a candidate’s name and the words “presidential race 2024,” Google completely buried Trump and elevated Biden as the first search result. In fact, the tech giant excluded the only two major pro-life candidates from the top-3 search results, singling out Trump and Constitution Party candidate for president Randall Terry. Every other candidate appeared in the top-three results. But the tech giant’s censorship didn’t end there. Google again buried Trump’s campaign website as the 39th result, while elevating Biden’s to the very top in a separate set of searches for “republican party presidential campaign websites” and “democratic party presidential campaign websites” respectively.
[…]In a search for “republican party presidential campaign websites,” Google buried Trump’s campaign website as the 39th out of 40 results shown. MRC Researchers found it just beneath the website link to democrats.org, which boasts of funds donated to Democrats being “put to use strengthening our efforts to defeat MAGA Republicans.” No other top Republican Party candidate’s campaign websites appeared in the search results, but a familiar face did appear in the top-10 results. GOP presidential candidate drop-out Will Hurd’s name-sake website appears as the sixth result, 33 spots above Trump’s campaign website.
MRC researchers also analyzed the Google Search results for “democratic party presidential campaign websites.” Google Search results predictably elevated Biden’s campaign website to the top of the heap, making it the first result after the same democrats.org website link that appeared above Trump’s campaign website in the other search query. Google also posted a second link to the official Biden campaign website as the 19th result out of 40.
One other Democratic Party candidate campaign website also appeared in the results. Marianne Williamson’s “Official Campaign Website” appeared as the sixth result.
Again, it’s not explained why anyone searching for a candidate’s campaign website would bother to use such a cumbersome search term. Instead, Morris showed that partisan narratives were his goal by rehashing old MRC research:
MRC Free Speech America compiled 41 times Google was caught interfering in U.S. elections, beginning in 2008, intensifying in 2016 and continuing into 2024. MRC researchers found carefully crafted studies and numerous reports (from 2008 through February 2024) that have consistently demonstrated the tech behemoth’s election meddling.
In fact, that MRC report did not involve “carefully crafted studies” but, rather, rehashing its own shoddy parrisan narratives designed to push right-wing attacks on Google.
Pariseau returned to do this again in a July 17 post:
As the Republican National Convention kicked off Monday, Google is continuing to bury former President Donald Trump’s campaign website while propping up his opponents.
MRC researchers searched Google using a “clean environment” (without the influence of prior search history and tracking cookies) and found that the search giant completely eliminated Donald Trump’s website from the top 100 search results, while pushing President Joe Biden’s campaign website up to the number one spot.
Researchers conducted three separate searches for the top three candidate’s names along with the words “presidential race 2024.” While the results for Trump brought up seemingly endless 2024 election updates, including news articles, polls and commentaries, the search engine did not display the candidate’s campaign website.
Google, however, had no issues displaying Joe Biden’s campaign website as the first result in an equivalent search. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s website appeared as the fourth result in a similar search.
MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider commented on Google’s tone-deaf bias in the aftermath of an assassination attempt on Trump. “Other left-wing media outlets and platforms are taking a pause from their anti-Trump tactics, but not Google,” he said. “The search giant has doubled down on its anti-American, election interference strategies.”
Schneider continued: “People who often do political searches on their computers will likely get different results since Google tracks their search history. But this study reflects a much darker, more sinister behavior at Google. It is through this kind of data manipulation that Google swayed millions of votes in the 2020 election. It must not be allowed to corrupt our democracy.”
Neither Schneider nor Pariseau explained why, exactly, a normal human who use those specific search terms to find a candidate’s website. Instead, Pariseau crowed that “MRC Free Speech America has tracked Google’s ability to produce the websites of any Republican or right-leaning candidate in the race since the first presidential debate in August 2023” — which, again, tells us this is a partisan political exercise and not anything designed to help Google users.