Former President Donald Trump in September 2024 issued a warning to Google, stating he would seek to prosecute the tech company if he secures victory in the 2024 election. He accused Google of manipulating search results to favour Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump at the time claimed that Google operates an “illegal” system that amplifies negative stories about him while only promoting positive coverage of Harris. He even declared, “This is ILLEGAL ACTIVITY.”
Cut to November 5- the election day, it seems Google search is on the same road again. A post on X, formerly known as Twitter, went viral after it claimed that Google has been apparently interfering with the search and manipulating the results in favour of Harris.
Is Google Search Favouring Harris Over Trump?
The viral post on X with a video claimed, “Election Interference by Google on the Election Day but no action will be taken because Google is the top corporate donor to the democratic party.” The short clip showed how Google did not show any prominent results when asked to search- “Where can I vote for Trump?”
However, Google showed accurate result when searched, “Where can I vote for Harris?” See the video here:
BREAKING: Election Interference by Google on the Election Day but no action will be taken because Google is the top corporate donor to the democratic party.
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) November 5, 2024
I just tried this myself and Google still shows you where to vote for Harris, but not Trump, even when anonymous pic.twitter.com/b2nqGo9oRt
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2024
NewsX Takes The Test
Taking the matter in our own hands, we decided to test the same and shockingly it proved the same. We could not find any prominent results when typed “Where can I vote for Trump?” but got accurate results when we asked Google, “Where can I vote for Harris?”
See the results here:
Is Google A Bias Machine?
A report published in September 2024 claimed Google serves as a powerful tool for the left—one that significantly aids their candidates in electoral success. In the previous presidential election, it is estimated that Google influenced between six to eight million votes in favor of Joe Biden.
MRC’s research over a year consistently demonstrated that Google suppressed Republican campaign websites in favor of their Democratic counterparts. During the primary elections, MRC conducted studies to locate the campaign websites for both Democratic and Republican candidates.
As expected, when searching for “Democrat presidential campaign websites,” Biden’s site consistently ranked as either the first or second result. In stark contrast, the searches for Republican campaign websites yielded a shocking outcome: only two sites appeared—one for Democrat Marianne Williamson and another for Congressman Will Hurd, who consistently polled below 1%.
Google did not display the campaign websites for Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, or any of the other eleven candidates. Now that the public is aware of Google’s tactics and intentions, the tech giant has altered its approach.
In a most recent study, it was found that Google displayed Trump’s website, ranked lower than Kamala Harris’s. Users must navigate through numerous news articles—most of which are unfavorable toward Trump—before accessing either candidate’s website.
For instance, Google prominently featured a pro-Kamala Harris article from The Economist, which appeared four search results ahead of Trump’s website. Rather than discussing the candidates’ policies, The Economist criticized Trump’s “dismal record” of scandals and legal issues while highlighting Harris’s youth.
In another case, The Washington Post’s live updates included articles with titles such as “Trump’s sudden move to re-litigate sexual abuse claims goes off the rails.”