Google Search suppresses search suggestions for the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump: The Daily Mail reported on July 28 that users who typed the words "assassination attempt on" were given search suggestions finishing the search that did not include former President Donald Trump. When searchers searched the words "assassination attempt on," Google finished the search with the names: "truman," "reagan," "ronald reagan," "george wallace," "lenin," "gerald ford," "franklin roosevelt," "andrew johnson," "fdr," and "seward." Notably missing was the most recent assassination attempt against a former president just a few weeks prior.

In Google's explanation of how its search autocomplete feature works it claims that "To determine what predictions to show, our systems look for common queries that match what someone starts to enter into the search box." The search giant alleged that it also considers factors such as the language, location and trending interest of the query as well as the user's past searches.

However, Google Trends shows that the number of searches for "assassination attempt on trump" was significantly higher than "assassination attempt on truman" and "assassination attempt on reagan." That was true for searches in the state of Virginia (where MRC researchers conducted the search), for searches conducted in the United States, and for searches conducted worldwide. Researchers also examined searches over the last 24 hours (July 28 and 29), the last 30 days, and the last 20 years each of which showed that the assassination attempt on Trump was by far searched more often and by more people than the attempts on former presidents HarryTruman and Ronald Regan's lives. Indeed it seems that the Daily Mail article on Google's search suppression is what prompted many users to search for the little-known assassination attempt on Truman on July 28 and 29.

Google claims that "Autocomplete is a time-saving but complex feature. It doesn’t simply display the most common queries on a given topic. That’s why it differs from and shouldn’t be compared against Google Trends." However, it is unclear why it would be helpful to suggest that users search for something that hardly anyone was currently searching accross the world.

In response to a video explaining the search suppression posted on X/Twitter, Google Communications claimed, "There was no manual action taken. Our systems have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event. We’re working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date. Of course, Autocomplete is just a tool to help people save time, and they can still search for anything they want to. Following this terrible act, people turned to Google to find high-quality information – we connected them with helpful results, and will continue to do so."