Anti-Democracy Google manipulates search results to bury Senate Republican candidate campaign websites before the 2022 midterm election. This follows a North Carolina State University study which found that Google’s Gmail marked 59% more spam emails from “right-leaning” candidates than those from “left-leaning” candidates.
L. Brent Bozell (founder and president of Media Research Center) stated that Google must be investigated for its un-American attempts to sway elections. Google was first caught red-handed by researchers who proved that emails from the Republican campaign were sent to spam. Now, we have discovered that Google manipulates search results to promote Democratic websites while hiding Republican campaign websites. Google is trying to interfere in the democratic process and help Democrats by doing this.
MRC Free Speech America analyzed the Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo search results of the 12 Senate races RealClearPolitics identified as the most important to monitor. Our researchers discovered that Google was highlighting the campaign websites of their opponents in organic search results while burying 10 of the 12 Senate Republican Party candidates’ website. This contrasts with Bing and DuckDuckGo, whose search results treated Republican- and Democrat campaign sites more neutrally than Google.
Google has buried the campaign websites of Senate Republican Party candidates. Ten of the 12 Senate Republican Party candidates’ websites (83%) were not found on page one of Google’s organic search results.
Google completely hidden seven of the 12 Senate Republican Party candidates’ campaign websites from page one organic search results. Google’s organic search did not show seven of the 12 Senate Republican Party candidate campaign websites. Nevertheless, eight of the 12 Senate Democratic Party candidate campaigns were highlighted in the top six organic search results.
Google’s search results bias is evident when compared with DuckDuckGo and Bing. Except for one candidate, both DuckDuckGo and Bing showed both the Senate Democratic Party candidate’s campaign websites and the Senate Republican Party candidate’s campaign websites in the top five organic results on page 1.
Recommendations
Google must end its war against Democracy. To rebuild trust with conservatives, Google must first:
Transparency: We need to see the details so that everyone can see if users and groups from the left are being treated equally. Social media companies operate in a closed-door environment. They only release anecdotes about reports of content and users when it is necessary. This must change. Companies must design open systems that can be held accountable while respecting privacy concerns.
Congress members must also take steps to protect Americans’ freedom of speech rights. Congress must investigate the search result bias and any efforts by Google to influence midterm elections.
Methodology
MRC Free Speech America analyzed the Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo search results of the 12 Senate races RealClearPolitics identified as the “Top Senate Races” in this report. The “Top Senate Races” included the Democratic Party (and Republican Party) candidates from the following states: Arizona Colorado, Florida Georgia, Missouri Nevada, New Hampshire North Carolina Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Washington.
MRC Free Speech America developed an algorithm to automate this process in a clean setting. Organic search can be performed in a “clean environment” without the influence of tracking cookies or prior search history.
MRC Free Speech America researchers used the algorithm to search each candidate’s name using the words “Senate Race2022”. Our researchers looked at the results of each search engine and recorded the rank(s), if any, of each candidate’s campaign site.
Example(s): “Blake Masters Senate Race 2020” and “Mark Kelly Senate Race 2020”
CAUGHT! Google Buries GOP Campaign Sites, Helps Dems before Midterms
A study by MRC Free Speech America shows that Google manipulates its search results in order to benefit Democrats just weeks prior to the midterm elections.
MRC Free Speech America found that Google search results buried Senate Republican candidates campaign websites 83 percent more often than their Democratic counterparts. In more than half these races, Google completely removed Republican campaign websites from the first page results.
L. Brent Bozell (founder and president of Media Research Center) stated that Google must be investigated for its un-American attempts to sway elections. Google was first caught red-handed by researchers who proved that emails from the Republican campaign were sent to spam. Now, we have discovered that Google manipulates search results to promote Democratic websites while hiding Republican campaign websites. Google is trying to interfere in the democratic process and help Democrats by doing this.
Google’s search results differ from those on other search engines Bing or DuckDuckGo. Except for two races, Bing and DuckDuckGo treated search results for Republican and Democratic candidate sites fairly neutrally and consistently showed the campaign websites of both candidates in the top five search results.
It is well-documented that Google has been a long-standing victim of anti-Democracy interference in election elections. North Carolina State University published a study that revealed that Gmail was suppressing Republican Party email. This was the most recent example of Google’s bias. MRC Free Speech America conducted this analysis due to the partisan nature and absurd censorship of Google. MRC Free Speech America researchers used a “clean” computer without any search history or embedded cookies to conduct a keyword search for each candidate on Oct. 7. They also searched for the words “Senate Race 2022” and then analyzed the search results of the 12 “Top Senate Races”, as identified by RealClearPolitics.
Search engine manipulation has a huge impact. According to Brian Dean, a search engine optimization expert, few users click on links that aren’t on the first page. Dean conducted a study to determine how often users click on different rankings of Google search results. Backlinko, Dean’s blog, reported that less that 1% of Google searchers clicked on the second page. A 2014 study by Moz, an SEO software company, found that the second page received only 3.99% of clicks. This indicates that the problem is getting worse.
According to Business Insider, Google is responsible for over 90% of all searches. This makes Google’s conduct unique among Big Tech companies. Dr. Robert Epstein, a liberal psychologist and researcher, has warned repeatedly about the danger Google presents to American voters because of its technological power and ability to influence elections.
In his 2019 testimony before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, Dr. Epstein stated that “Google poses a serious danger to democracy.” He pointed out that Google and Big Tech can change 15 million votes. He also said that “to allow Big Tech to get away with subliminal manipulating on this scale would make the free and fair elections meaningless.”
Dr. Epstein has conducted extensive research and monitored the experiences of users using Google products during the 2016-2018 and 2020 elections.
In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Fox News contributor and host of Fox News in 2020, Dr. Epstein noted that “Google’s search result were strongly biased in favor Democrat and Liberals.” However, he said that every user was affected by the bias but that conservatives didn’t receive a Google “vote reminder,” until he released some of his findings.
Google’s bias could have a profound effect on voting. He stated, “The bottom line right now is that these manipulations that we have so far quantified could easily have easily shifted at most six million votes in one direction.” That’s all.
Google has buried the campaign websites of Senate Republican Party candidates.
Ten of the 12 Republican websites were found in Google’s search results much lower than those of their campaign websites. Seven of the 12 Republican websites were actually completely hidden by Google. Google, however, highlighted eight of the 12 Democratic sites and had them appear in the top six search results.
Google’s search results for North Carolina’s Senate Candidates are an example Google’s most outrageous election interference. While Ted Budd, the Republican Representative,’s campaign website didn’t appear on the first page Google’s search results, Cheri Beasley, the Democratic Campaign Website, was.
Similar stories are told in the hotly contested Pennsylvania and Ohio races. The Ohio Democrat Rep. Tim Ryan’s campaign website was the second Google search result. Pennsylvania’s Democrat John Fetterman’s website was third. The best part? J.D., their Republican rivals, created the campaign websites. Vance, Ohio and Dr. Mehmet O of Pennsylvania were removed from the first page Google search results.
Google also removed from the first page results the websites of other Republican candidates such as Sen Marco Rubio of Florida and Adam Laxalt (Nevada), Don Bolduc (New Hampshire) and Herschel Walker (Georgia).
Predictably, the few Republican campaign websites that managed to avoid complete elimination appeared near the bottom on the first page. Missouri Republican Eric Schmitt’s website ranked 27th among 29 results, while Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson’s website ranked 13th among 28 results.
Backlinko’s SEO study found that the top six Google search results receive 74 percent of all clicks. This makes Google’s biased demotions of key Senate Republican campaign websites even more sinister.
Google’s search results bias is undisputed when compared with DuckDuckGo and Bing.
The same analysis was done by MRC Free Speech America using the DuckDuckGo and Bing search engines. It revealed a completely different story.
Except for Sen. Michael Bennet in Colorado and Dr. Mehmet O of Pennsylvania, all other campaign websites appeared in the top five results of both DuckDuckGo and Bing search results.
Vice President of MRC Free Speech America Dan Schneider stated that Google’s bias was intentional. “Clearly, Bing and DuckDuckGo algorithms deliberately placed these websites at top of search results. It is intentional. These algorithms are not written by themselves. The code is written by someone who knows how to get the desired result. We know what Google wants. They want to boost Democrats while burying Republicans.”
Google has a disturbing history of quietly supporting Democrats.
It should not be surprising that Google is biased. Google has been assisting Democrat politicians for at most a decade.
A North Carolina State University study has shown that Google marked emails from right-leaning candidates spam. A North Carolina State University study revealed that Gmail marked 59.3 percentage more spam emails from right-leaning candidates than those from left-leaning ones. The study concluded that “It appears the political affiliation of sender plays [a] role when an email is marked as spam.” Google filed with Federal Election Commission. On Aug. 11, FEC approved a pilot program Google proposed to address GOP concerns. The pilot program is not perfect. The Republican National Committee informed MRC Free Speech America Oct. 3 that Gmail had suppressed more than 22 million GOP get out-the-vote or fundraising emails in a three-day span.
Google actively supported Hillary Clinton’s win of the Latino vote in 2016. Carlson’s Fox News report revealed that a troubling Google email chain was sent the day after Election Day 2016. Eliana Murillo, then head of Google’s Multicultural Marketing, wrote the first email, “Elections results, and the Latino vote”. She reportedly wrote that Google’s “non-partisan” activities included supporting partners like Voto Latino in paying for rides to key states’ polls (silent donation). We even helped them create ad campaign to promote the rides (with the support of HOLA people who rallied and volunteered to help). Voto Latino was supported by HOLA to help them get an interview with Senator Robert Meza of Arizona (key state to us) to discuss the election and how Google search can be used to find information about how you vote.
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, funded Clinton’s largest vendor. The Groundwork was a technology company that Hillary Clinton hired. Eric Schmidt was at the time the executive chairman for Alphabet, Google’s parent company. According to Quartz, the firm was one of the campaign’s largest vendors and was located “just blocks away” from Clinton campaign headquarters. The Groundwork was run by Michael Slaby (chief technology officer for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election campaign). Quartz reported that Schmidt praised Schmidt’s use of Google resources for Democratic campaigns. Slaby stated that there are many people who can write large checks. Eric recognizes that the technology he has been developing throughout his career can be applied in different areas. He deeply understands the idea of tech being a force multiplier.
Google was closely involved in the Obama administration. In 2016, The Intercept reported that “between January 2009 and October 2015 Google staffers gathered in the White House on 427 different occasions.” The Intercept also noted Johanna Shelton, Google Public Policy Director, visited the White House 128 more times than lobbyists from other tech companies. According to The Intercept, the Obama White House reportedly gave Google and Google-affiliated employees the task of fixing HealthCare.gov’s famous 2013 crash.
Google’s 2022 employee contributions history is consistent with its bias.
It’s clear from their political donations what Google employees want at a ballot box.
Open Secrets reports that employees and affiliate PACs of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. donated more than $6 million to Democrat campaigns and organizations during the 2022 election cycle. The 12 “Top Senate Races” of Democratic candidates that MRC Free Speech America analyzed are some of the biggest recipients of that money.
Collectively, Alphabet Inc. employees contributed the most to the Democrat opponents for six Republicans whose campaign websites Google hid on the first page search results.
According to Open Secrets, Alphabet employees contributed $595,547 in total to 10 of the 12 Democrats analyzed. $230,139 went to Georgia Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock; $73,558 went to Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman; $66,823 went to New Hampshire Democrat Senator Maggie Hassan. Other top contributors include Cheri Beasley and Sen. Catherine Cortez–Masto, Rep. Tim Ryan, and Sen. Mark Kelly.
It is not surprising that Google employees gave more to these Democrats than their opponents, 30x more. Google employees gave $19,188 to five Republicans in this report. This includes only $33 to Sen. Marco Rubio, and $380 to Senator Ron Johnson. These Republicans are currently looking at legislation to curb Google’s anti-American activities.
Conclusion:
Google is the most popular search engine in the entire world. Alphabet, a billion-dollar company owned by Alphabet, has used its power and influence to negatively impact Americans. This includes manipulating search results, as shown in this report. The tech giant has been accused in tampering its email system and sending biased emails to spam folders of users. Google has also made it clear that they are anti-conservative. They have worked hand-in-glove to the Obama administration and actively supported Hillary Clinton’s win of the Latino vote in 2016.
Google claims that its goal is to “significantly improve the lives of as many people possible”, but its actions prove that this does not apply to conservatives, as it attempts to influence election results in favor of the left.
Recommendations:
Google must end its war against Democracy. Transparency is the first step to rebuild trust with conservatives. We need to have detailed information so that everyone can see if users and groups from the left are treated equally. Social media companies operate in a closed-door environment. They only release anecdotes about reports regarding content and users when it is necessary. This must change. Companies must design open systems that can be held accountable while respecting privacy concerns.
Congress members must also take steps to protect Americans’ freedom of speech rights. Congress must investigate the search result bias and any efforts by Google to influence midterm elections.
Methodology
MRC Free Speech America analyzed the Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo search results of the 12 Senate races RealClearPolitics identified as the “Top Senate Races” in this report. The “Top Senate Races” included the Democratic Party (and Republican Party) candidates from the following states: Arizona Colorado, Florida Georgia, Missouri Nevada, New Hampshire North Carolina Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Washington.
These searches were conducted in a clean environment by MRC Free Speech America. Organic search can be performed in a “clean environment” without the influence of tracking cookies or prior search history.
MRC Free Speech America researchers used the algorithm to search each candidate’s name using the words “Senate Race2022”. Our researchers looked at the results of each search engine and recorded the rankings for each candidate’s website.
Example(s): “Blake Masters Senate Race 2020” and “Mark Kelly Senate Race 2020”
