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There is currently a video by SourceFed being spread around the internet, claiming that Google appear to have censored autosuggest results in order to boost Hillary Clinton's campaign by excluding results for "crime" or "indictment".

I am extremely skeptical about this claim, firstly since it seems unlikely that Google would choose to exert political influence in this way, and secondly because it seems like the effect would be so small as to not be worthwhile.

Whilst the video shows several screenshots showing that autosuggest does not show results for "Hillary Clinton crime", etc, it seems possible that there could be other explanations – for example, this Vox article claims that Google never suggests searches for famous people's names plus terms relating to crimes.

So: is any evidence available that would prove or disprove the claim that Google manipulates its autosuggest results for political ends, as opposed to, say, simply having an automated algorithm which making potentially libellous suggestions?

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  • @gnometorule, I had assumed that may be the case. A brief search turns up this Vox article which says as much, though with no references regarding actual policy.
    – Caesar
    Commented Jun 13, 2016 at 4:41
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    @Dawn, the notable claim being made here is that they're censoring the results for political ends; not that they're manipulating them at all (for example, assuming they 'manipulate' them in the way gnometorule says, that would contradict the claim).
    – Caesar
    Commented Jun 13, 2016 at 4:42
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    Article from February 2014 suggesting Google blocks unrelated autocomplete results (racist ones): searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2328565/…
    – Golden Cuy
    Commented Jun 13, 2016 at 5:28
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    Note that it would also censor "Donald Trump crime" and "Barack Obama crime".
    – wizzwizz4
    Commented Aug 21, 2016 at 15:23
  • Now its "illness" vs "impeach". I don't think google itself is manipulating the results as much as trolls and paid shills on both sides are, through biased complaints and google bombing.
    – daniel
    Commented Sep 18, 2017 at 9:59

1 Answer 1

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Google's own statement to The Washington Times explains the underlying issue:

Our Autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person’s name. More generally, our autocomplete predictions are produced based on a number of factors including the popularity of search terms

and as much as their own words are worth in this context they also explicitly disavow Google Autocomplete favoring a specific candidate or cause

Google Autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause

Secondly there is an issue where people searching for negative things about Hillary Clinton use 'Hillary X', not 'Hillary Clinton X', as noted on Twitter by Matt Cutts, a Google Employee (compare autocomplete results for 'Hillary in' and 'Hillary Clinton in').

And lastly it's possible to compare it to Donald Trump autocomplete results as is done by Rhea Drysdale

Donald Trump was accused of rape by Ivana Trump during their divorce. She has since disavowed this, but it’s a real story in the news and many have searched for it. Interestingly, a Google search for “Donald Trump ra-” does not return anything about the rape. There are many mentions of “rally,” which makes sense, but “Donald Trump rap” has less trending searches in the last year and ranks where as “Donald Trump rape” does not. Search trends are a significant factor in how Google Autocomplete works — this is the entire basis for SourceFed’s claim and yet according to their logic, Google must be favoring Donald Trump as well.

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    I would argue that the word rape is much more offensive that the word indictment, I could understand google auto-filtering out the word rape yet the original story showed how Google results filtered out indictment and suggested india and indiana; where as yahoo and bing suggested indictment when "hillary clinton ind" was typed.
    – John
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 4:38
  • @John out of curiosity, I tried typing in "bill clinton ra" and no rape-related suggestions came up.
    – user2752467
    Commented Aug 17, 2016 at 22:37
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    @JustinLardinois On the same note "bill clinton ind" returns nothing, "Bill Cosby ind" returns nothing, and "Casey Anthony ind" returns a whole host of indictment autocomplete
    – DasBeasto
    Commented Feb 17, 2017 at 14:49
  • @DasBeasto which would imply that the search filter isn't working with a wordlist, but being manually operated. The filters protecting Trump would then indicate that (pending further examples) Google isn't necessarily biased against one party but biased against people too poor or unpopular to sue or shame it for disparaging autocompletes.
    – lly
    Commented Mar 6, 2020 at 8:00

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