As we’ve been hearing lately in the search community, Google has been denying claims that the company has been manipulating their autocomplete search suggestions in favor of the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
This was Google’s communications team issued statement from June 10th:
“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. More generally, our autocomplete predictions are produced based on a number of factors including the popularity of search terms.”
The company later posted about the issue on its blog.
SourceFed claims that Google has altered the autocomplete suggestions to make Hillary Clinton look better.
A series of nine tweets were posted by Matt Cutts, calling the claims made by the SourceFed video false. Here are those tweets:
1/ @SourceFed claims “Google has been actively altering search recommendations in favor of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” That’s simply false.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016
2/ Their two anecdotes: [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][hillary clinton in] didn’t suggest [hillary clinton indictment] & [hillary clinton cri] didn’t suggest crimes.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016
3/ It turns out that lots of people searching for negative things about HRC search for [hillary X], not [hillary clinton X]
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016
4/ Here’s some live screenshot examples, including [hillary in] returning [hillary indictment] as first suggestion. pic.twitter.com/VEn3A4ef5y
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016
5/ And here’s some more examples of Autocomplete returning negative suggestions for HRC, including “criminal email” pic.twitter.com/5oczWWvmmU
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016
6/ See https://t.co/5avsTVn4ab for a smart write-up about how/why Google Autocomplete appears to avoid “crimes” for all, not just HRC.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016
7/ Also see https://t.co/fLdlJ19BmX for another good take.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016
8/ P.S. @mattlieberman I asked Google’s search PR. They couldn’t find a record of you reaching out to Google before publishing your video?
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016
9/ @mattlieberman this is a super-technical area. Why make a long video of these claims without doing deeper research? It’s just not true.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016
Source – Barry Schwartz[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]