Talk about living down to expectations. Google gave a measly mea culpa after several conservative websites were delisted from its general search and appeared to have been blacklisted.
The massive search engine company claimed that a technical issue prevented many high profile conservative websites from being reached via Google. Google said the problem was merely a bug in the system. Yesterday, websites such as NewsBusters, MRCTV, CNSNews, Free Beacon, Breitbart, The Resurgent, Twitchy, RedState, PJ Media, Judicial Watch, The Blaze, Townhall, Project Veritas, LifeNews, PragerU, and The Daily Wire could not be found in an organic search on Google. Today, Google apologized via Twitter after fixing this “bug.”
The company claimed that, “Contrary to some speculation, this did not target particular sites or political ideologies….Today’s issue affected sites representing a range of content and different viewpoints. Our ranking systems don’t index, rank or classify content based on political lean.”
But conservatives remained unconvinced. Media Research Center Founder and President Brent Bozell declared on Twitter:
We want official answers now! Congress needs to demand that Google tell why they temporarily blacklisted conservative sites. We know why it happened. And it’s 100% unacceptable.
Popular conservative talk radio host Mark Levin tweeted an article about the incident and curtly commented “Google all in for Biden and Democrats.” Host of YourVoice™ America Bill Mitchell suggested “THEY ALL LIED UNDER OATH - ARREST THEM.”
Liberal sites such as Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, HuffPost, and Teen Vogue, had no issue. Their websites showed up on Google organic search.
The attached screenshot from Google’s “How Search Works” site claimed,“[W]hile our systems do look for these kind of quantifiable signals to assess relevance, they are not designed to analyze subjective concepts such as the viewpoint or political leaning of a page’s content.”
How Google claims to run its platform and how Google actually manages its platform appear to be very different. A Google whistleblower previously informed guerilla journalism group Project Veritas that there was a Google Now blacklist and a Google blocklist. Those lists included NewsBusters, MRCTV, Twitchy, Conservative Tribune, Front Page Mag, Christian Post, Daily Caller, and Catholic News Agency, among others.
Google may have a 'secret blacklist' of conservative news outlets, former Google engineer Mike Wacker claimed.
He suggested to Mediaite, “It appears to have revealed the existence of another blacklist that disproportionately targets conservatives.”
Wacker speculated: “The glitch is that sites on this blacklist disappeared from Google search results, but the existence of the list is very much by design. And that raises a major question: Why was this blacklist created in the first place, and what else is it used for?”
Project Veritas also published a video in 2018 showing Google Responsible Innovation Head Jen Gennai suggesting that “breaking up Google” would not “prevent the next Trump situation.” She also mused how changes in Google’s secret algorithms could have prevented his election from happening in the first place.
