Is Google politicizing search results?

Factual Questions
1

Disclaimer: I know little about Hillary Clinton’s dirty washing, if such it be, and care less. Were I American rather than English I’d certainly vote for her in preference to Trump. This question is quite genuine.

OK, I just came across this Youtube video. It claims that Google is manipulating its search suggestions for Hillary Clinton to remove any that may be damaging to her.

For instance type in Hillary Clinton ind and the top Google suggestions are Hillary Clinton Indiana and Hillary Clinton India; of Hillary Clinton indictment there is no sign. All other main search engines, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc have Hillary Clinton indictment as the top suggestion. I tried it and that is indeed the case. Other HC queries are mentioned which give odd results on Google.

The remainder of the 12-minute video goes on to explore connections between the owners of Alphabet and the Democrats but that’s irrelevant to my question. Is Google playing dirty pool here or not? I need the straight dope on this rather than the assertions of a YT video with a picture of Guy Fawkes and a pseudo-robotic voiceover.

2

Wow.

3

If they are, they’re not doing a good job. “Hillary ind” without her last name is full of indictment stuff. And I get the same thing with “Donald Trump law.” Google gives me lawyer, laws, law school, Lawrence O’Donnell, law firm, and lawn. The first one on Bing is lawsuits.

4

And if i type “Hillary Clinton” the third auto suggestion is “Hillary Clinton emails”

5

“The facts have a well-known liberal bias”

6

My old grandpa always used to tell me, “Never trust strange videos you meet on the internet”. Wise man. And prescient too - he died in 1951.

7
8

I’m curious whether there is some legal or moral difference between FoxNews.com politicizing its information and Google.com politicising its? How about between Wikipedia and Conservapedia?

Frankly, we can only wish that the forces of reason in the world of information were as deliberate in pushing for informed truth as the forces of hypocrisy are in pushing lies.

9

Everyone knows that Google search results can be manipulated. There are businesses that will help a company improve its ranking. Here is a random one. I am sure that political parties would not shrink from using these methods.

10

Yes, but these don’t work for getting specific hits or suggestions to rank lower, which is what this theory is about.

11

All media, and the internet companies that provide media, are bias in one way or another. Caveat emptor when you consume some news of any sort.

12

Nitpick: the American expression is “dirty laundry.” That’s one difference that I didn’t know until now existed between America and England.

13

Actually read about what Joe Kennedy did to get his son elected President. You will be shocked at all the people/businesses/media he was able to “pay off”.

Book: “The Sins of the Father” by Ronald Kessler

And the Democrats have no monopoly on this “paying off” either!

14

No. Snopes is your friend.

15

OK so now by definition ANY result of a search, a publication index, a scientific study, etc., that does not conclude first and foremost our desired line of thought, or does not start off with our desired line of thought as the default, is to be presumed manipulated by bias? Are we really moving into an age where **nobody **has credibility?

I could just as well say that it sounds more like her opponents are whining that they haven’t been able to googlebomb the algorithm to drive away any positive result, I have jacksquat proof of that either.

16

Experiment: Find a person who’s complaining that Google is biased towards liberals and then ask them whether they think the Fairness Doctrine is a good idea.

17

You’re talking about the advertiser side of the internet: Anyone with a web site can take SEO steps to improve the ranking of their own site in Google searches.

But there’s another side, and it might be more relevant to OP’s question:

Google also keeps extensive details about the searches people do, and learns a whole lot about the users doing the searches, some of which it can identify with the specific people using Google (especially if you are signed on while searching). As Google learns more about you, the user, it adjusts the search results it shows you according to Google’s idea of what you are most likely searching for. In a sense, Google builds an echo-chamber around you, optimizing the search results to show what Google thinks you most want to see.

This could explain, for example, why people who do searches for, e.g., liberal topics like Hillary Clinton, pro-gun-control sites, abortion pro-choice information, etc., will over time begin to see more and more of just that kind of results. This is known as the “Internet Filter Bubble” that you can get trapped in. Another user who searches for conservative information will, over time, begin to see more and more of that.

Here is an easy-to-read illustrated explanation of search engine bubbling by DuckDuckGo:
Escape Your Search Engine’s Filter Bubble

ETA: The page shows, for example, that one person might google “Egypt” and get pages of news stories about political protests in Egypt, while another user might google “Egypt” and get pages of travel and tourism information about Egypt.

18

Also heard it as

“Reality has a liberal bias.”

19

“Reality has a well-known liberal bias” was a line from Stephen Colbert’s White House Correspondents Dinner speech in 2006. “The facts have a well-known liberal bias” was a line from Rob Corddry on The Daily Show in 2004.

Inspired, perhaps, by this gem…
“We’re an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality.” - George W. Bush White House staffer (Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush - The New York Times)

20

As pointed out above, no. But why would you level the accusation of “dirty pool” at them. They are a privately held company with no obligations to political candidates or the public at large regarding their collective political leanings.