Following Media Research Center’s (MRC) report that Google search results exhibit bias against Biden’s challengers, Just the News conducted a similar test.
Search engine optimization (SEO) researcher Eric Goldman wrote in an email to Just the News, “Search engine indexing and ordering is the kind of topic that would benefit from a proper academic study, not an advocacy stunt,” referring to MRC’s report.
Where MRC’s report googled the candidates, Just the News added logged-in searches to its analysis.
Logged-in searches draw upon a user’s search history to influence results.
Only Republican presidential candidate Will Hurt appeared in non-paid search results for “Republican presidential campaign websites.”
In Google’s incognito mode, where search results are continually added to the first page, Florida Governor Ron Desantis was halfway down and Vivek Ramaswamy was the last result.
When looking for “presidential campaign websites,” Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was the 10th search result.
Because many of the candidates’ websites were developed recently, Republicans “haven’t had time to build a broad and deep network of inbound links from trusted third-party sites,” compared to mainstream media sites that MRC alleged were biased, Goldman told Just the News.
Reporting from Just the News:
Psychologist Epstein sees far more than theoretical risks. He shared a "confidential progress report" with Just the News from his Digital Shield project, which started tracking ephemeral experiences days before the midterm elections. It has found "substantial liberal bias in Google search results" but not Microsoft's Bing, twice as much liberal bias in YouTube's news-related video suggestions (75%) as news videos in general, "significantly more go-vote reminders sent to liberals than to conservatives on Google’s home page on Election Day" and far more election updates Twitter gave liberals compared to conservatives.
