Google “Hillary Clinton Crimes” right now.
What comes up?
I’ll tell you. A whole bunch of stories regarding Hillary Clinton and potential crimes she’s committed over the past thirty years. On page 1 alone there are links to various right-wing websites.
So when SourceFed came up with a fancy video this week suggesting Google has been manipulating search results to favor Clinton, they had to do some fancy manipulation of their own.
They argue if you Google “Hillary Clinton cri” nothing much comes up.
So?
If you Google “Donald Trump ra” nothing much comes up.
Even though Trump had been accused of rape by his ex wife in court documents.
If you Google “George Bush du” nothing much comes up.
Even though Bush once pleaded guilty to a DUI.
If you Google “Newt Gingrich aff” nothing much comes up.
Even though Gingrich had an affair at the same time he was leading the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
Google explains it this way:
Google Autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause. Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how Autocomplete works. Our Autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person’s name.
Longtime Google search guru Matt Cutts answered the allegations: “SourceFed claims ‘Google has been actively altering search recommendations in favor of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.’ That’s simply false. This is a super-technical area. Why make a long video of these claims without doing deeper research? It’s just not true.”
“It’s hard for me to believe that Google manually changed autocomplete results,” Razvan Gavrilas told the Wall Street Journal. “And if they did, it would be completely opposite to their business ethics until now.”
The fact is you could choose various phrases to toss into Google search and make this same argument. It’s really much ado about nothing.