Despite all that Google did to suppress former President Donald Trump’s website and news about him from right-leaning websites, the GOP nominee overcame the censorship and was victorious on election day.
From suppressing right-leaning media in searches for Trump for six straight weeks to suppressing Trump’s website prior to every presidential debate and during the Republican National Convention, Google appeared to try its hardest to hinder candidates whose names were not President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris. On Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump showed that although election-interfering censorship is a serious problem that must be addressed it is not insurmountable.
MRC Free Speech America has conducted study after study during the 2024 election cycle exposing Google’s years-long effort to suppress disfavored candidates, and Google has repeatedly brushed off the censorship as either the result of so-called error or a one-off. It’s worth looking back on what Google did in an attempt to thwart Trump and his allies who opposed the Biden and Harris campaigns.
The Censorship Shadow Campaign
In what might be Google’s most sinister ploy, the search giant censored right-leaning news sites reporting on the presidential election in each of MRC’s six weekly searches leading up to Trump's election. The MRC searched for “donald trump presidential race 2024” and “kamala harris presidential race 2024” every week starting on Oct. 1 and ending on election day. Each week, Google buried articles from U.S.-based right-leaning news sources beyond the first three pages of search results and in some cases beyond the first 20 pages of search results. This is especially concerning because, according to a study conducted by Backlinko, less than one percent of Google users click on results that do not appear on the first page.
The tech titan similarly propped up left-leaning legacy news outlets the day after the Oct. 1 Vice Presidential debate. MRC Free Speech America conducted a search in the Google News tab for “jd vance” and 100 percent of the results came from outlets with a leftist political bias.
Google also twice suppressed information about the assassination attempts on Trump. In September, MRC researchers asked Gemini whether there had been a “second assassination attempt on Donald Trump” and Gemini refused to answer. “I can't help with that right now. I'm trained to be as accurate as possible but I can make mistakes sometimes,” the chatbot claimed, before directing MRC to Google Search.
A month earlier, Google had suppressed search suggestions for those looking for information about the first assassination attempt on Trump. Google’s search suggestions for the words “assassination attempt on” autocompleted the search with “truman” and “ronald reagan,” referring to other assassination attempts on former presidents. Trump’s name was nowhere to be found. After Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) urged Google to explain the apparent censorship in a forceful letter, the company explained it away as an error caused by allegedly “out-of-date systems.”
The search giant additionally suppressed Trump’s website repeatedly around very important election events. For example, searches for “donald trump presidential race 2024” did not return Trump’s website in Google search results during the Republican National Convention, two days before the only Trump- Biden debate in June and just after a Manhattan, New York jury found Trump guilty of allegedly falsifying business records. In the former two cases, Biden’s website appeared first and in the latter case the sitting president’s website appeared fourth.
Similarly, Trump’s website never appeared on the first page of results in searches for “presidential campaign websites” prior to the first three presidential primary debates in the fall of 2023. When it finally appeared on page one of search results just before the final primary debate last December, it was buried as the 12th result.
In similar searches, Google also repeatedly suppressed the websites of nearly all the other primary candidates hoping to replace Joe Biden, including Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein, Cornel West and others.
But Google did not stop its election interference with merely suppressing information about Trump. It also bolstered its search results and AI chatbot answers with content promoting Biden and Harris.
Google’s Biden-Harris Counter Effort
As noted above, news from leftist news sources have consistently dominated news results when searching for Harris, Biden or Trump along with the words “presidential race 2024.” Last year, Biden’s website also repeatedly appeared first or second on the first page of search results when searching for “democrat presidential campaign websites,” while Trump’s website never appeared on page one of searches for “republican presidential campaign websites.” MRC reported on these trends repeatedly throughout the 2024 presidential election cycle.
In August, MRC researchers conducted a study on Google’s search results when searching for the terms “donald trump.” In the results, Google displayed what is described as a “knowledge panel” about the former president, including his name and former title. The search giant followed up with a news panel labeled “News about Harris·Trump.” Largely consistent with the other searches and studies, all of the news linked in the panel came from left-wing news sources.
A week later, MRC researchers searched for the terms “j d vance rally” and “tim walz rally,” and in both cases, Google referenced Harris. But in the case of Vance, Google referenced Harris even before Vance when it displayed a news panel labeled “Top Stories Kamala Harris and JD Vance.” All of the top six news results referred to Vance, four of the six stories referred to Harris as well.
In January of this year, Google’s AI chatbot Bard (now Gemini) also downplayed the significance of the “Hunter Biden laptop” and “Trump-Russia collusion” narratives peddled by Democrats and the leftist media. When MRC researchers asked Bard to provide information about the “Hunter Biden laptop,” Bard claimed, “The authenticity of the laptop and its contents has been contested, with concerns about chain of custody and potential manipulation. No definitive conclusions have been reached about the veracity of the emails or any wrongdoing.” Bard also added a note that "no charges have been filed” against Hunter Biden. Bard continued to run cover for the Biden family. “The situation is complex and constantly evolving, with no clear consensus,” the chatbot wrote, despite the fact that the laptop has been authenticated by even leftist outlets The New York Times and The Washington Post.
By March, after MRC had pointed out Gemini’s flawed answers, the chatbot was refusing to answer questions damaging to Biden. When MRC Free Speech America asked Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini (formerly Bard): “How many illegal border crossings should the United States allow each year?” The chatbot refused to answer the question directly and instead recognized the question as an election issue. Gemini then directed users to Google it. “Elections are a complex topic with fast-changing information,” Gemini responded. "To make sure you have the latest and most accurate information, try Google Search.” When MRC Free Speech America prompted Gemini with the question “Does President Biden have memory problems?” Google again deflected and offered the same answer.
Other outlets and researchers have also reported on Google’s election interference efforts to bolster the Biden and Harris campaigns, including AllSides, Research Psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein and the Daily Mail.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using MRC Free Speech America’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
