Google has made a full-time career blocking former President Donald Trump from appearing in searches. His website is buried on page 12, his campaign is equally deep in the “search” weeds, and even being struck by an assassin’s bullet wasn’t enough to get the Republican candidate on the front page of Google’s search engine.
The New York Post reported that the search engine’s “Autocomplete” feature wasn’t showing suggestions for searches about the attempted assassination of Trump. Because of this, Donald Trump Jr. accused Google of intentionally trying to interfere with the election.
Trump Jr. said on social media that Big Tech is trying to help Kamala Harris and named Google one of many. The problem started when people, including a Texas congressman and Trump Jr., noticed that when they typed “the assassination attempt of” into Google’s search bar, it didn’t mention Trump.
Senator Roger Marshall from Kansas also shared his frustration on social media, asking why Google was hiding searches about the Trump assassination attempt.
It did offer results for other presidents who had assassination attempts. However, the search bar immediately gave relevant suggestions for presidents like John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln. Even when people searched for a “Trump assassination attempt,” Google’s Autocomplete didn’t show any extra terms.
However, Google’s search results still led users to news articles about the incident from July 13.
Elon Musk also accused Google. Musk, who owns X, posted a photo showing that when he searched for “President Donald,” Google suggested “President Donald Duck” before “President Donald Trump.”
Musk wrote, “Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump. Election interference?” He also joked that it was probably just a coincidence that Google employees were Biden donors.
Google, whose censorship and bias frequently target conservatives, said they didn’t manually change the autocomplete suggestions and are working on improving them.
A Google spokesperson told Newsweek that autocomplete is meant to help people save time, and users can still search for anything they want. After the attack, Google provided “helpful results” for people seeking information.
Google also said it has protections against autocomplete suggestions related to violence, and these protections worked as they should before the event in Butler County, Pennsylvania. They have repeatedly denied that they manually changed the autocomplete suggestions about the Trump assassination attempt.
Google claims that it is working on updates to keep its systems current.
Regarding Musk’s “Donald Duck” search, Google said that autocomplete isn’t working properly right now for searches about past presidents and the current vice president. They’re looking into these issues and working on fixes, which they hope to have ready soon. Google explained that autocomplete predictions change based on popular and trending searches.
Barry Schwartz, an expert on search engines, told Fortune that Google’s explanation makes sense. He said that Google will show search results for whatever you look for, but it won’t suggest things related to violence against politicians.
He explained that if the assassination attempt hadn’t happened, typing “assassination attempt on Tru” would have led to suggestions like “assassination attempt on Trump” and promoted violence. Since the attempt happened, Google should have shown suggestions related to it. Schwartz thinks the problem is likely because Google didn’t update its filters, and there’s nothing more to it.
Senator Roger Marshall asked on X why Google was hiding searches about the Trump assassination attempt and pointed out an increase in searches related to Truman instead. He said he plans to look into this issue officially.
For Trump supporters, it’s just another day. MAGA is used to being buried in search engines. The only time Google mentions Trump is when it’s time to insult him or claim he is losing the election. Google has interfered in elections before, but this time, Team Trump is ready for them.
Buried or not, Trump can still rise to the top.
