Google said Tuesday that President Trump was wrong to suggest the search engine manipulates its results by using algorithms to deliberately elevate liberal media outlets over conservative ones.
“When users type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds. Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology,” a spokesperson for the tech giant said in a statement.
“Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users’ queries. We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment,” the spokesperson added.
Referencing a study from the right-wing outlet PJ Media, Trump in a series of tweets Tuesday said 96 percent of Google search results involving him and his presidency “are from National Left-Wing Media.”
“They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation,” the president wrote. He also warned that he planned to “address” this problem somehow. Several conservative news outlets have previously complained about the structure of Google search results, often claiming that left-leaning outlets are favored by the search engine.
The president’s criticism of Google comes as the company plans to join Facebook and Twitter on Capitol Hill next week for a congressional hearing that is expected to focus on how each company handles political content and the dissemination of information on their sites.
