We previously looked at a report showing that GOP fundraising emails were being immediately directed to Gmail users’ spam folders at a vastly more frequent rate than those of Democrats. You can read what you like into that news since everyone seems to have issues with their spam folders in Gmail. But another substantial brick was set in this wall following an investigation from mrcNewsBusters that found disturbingly similar results in the search returns from three major browsers provided to users looking for information about several upcoming critical midterm Senate races.  NewsBusters evaluated the search returns from Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo and the disparity was stark. Google buried search returns seeking information about Republican Senate candidates while copiously highlighting the campaign material from their Democratic opponents. This requires an immediate investigation, but thus far Google is remaining mum on the subject and will not even comment on the question.

Anti-Democracy Google is manipulating search results to bury Senate Republican candidates’ campaign websites before the 2022 midterm elections. This comes on the heels of a North Carolina State University study that found that Google’s Gmail marked 59.3 percent more emails from “right”-leaning candidates as spam compared to “left”-leaning candidates.

“Google must be investigated for its un-American efforts to sway the election,” said L. Brent Bozell, founder and president of the Media Research Center. “First, researchers caught Google red-handed by proving Republican campaign emails were sent to spam. Now we’ve uncovered Google manipulating search results to hide Republican campaign websites while promoting Democratic ones. This is all an effort by Google to help Democrats and interfere in the democratic process.”

MRC Free Speech America has analyzed Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo search results for the 12 Senate races identified by RealClearPolitics as the most important to watch. Our researchers caught Google burying 10 of 12 Senate Republican Party candidates’ campaign websites while highlighting their opponents campaign sites in organic search results. This stands in stark contrast to Bing and DuckDuckGo whose search results treated Republican and Democrat campaign websites more neutrally than Google.

The details in the linked report paint a definitely stark picture that random algorithm selections seemingly couldn’t account for. 10 of 12 Senate Republican Party candidates’ campaign websites (83%) were buried far lower on Google’s search returns (if they appeared at all) than their Democrat opponents. By contrast, matching search results from Bing and DuckDuckGo included both the websites of the Democratic and Republican candidates in the top five search results on the first page.

This isn’t something that happens by accident. It’s also implausible to claim that search frequency is playing a major role in the results. All of the races in question are very tight at the moment, with the momentum shifting toward the GOP in most recent poll results. There clearly seems to be a filter being applied that shoves the GOP results further down below the random noise level while favoring the Democrats.

Should any of us be acting surprised at this point? We’ve already seen the documents leaked by whistleblowers showing that the Biden administration has been in touch with the tech giants on a regular basis, “suggesting” what information should be deemed “misinformation” and be censored. If you’re one of the people in charge at Google, it’s only a very tiny step further to simply begin burying search results that might draw traffic to the content of the disfavored party.

This appears to be blatant election manipulation, the same thing that Democrats have tried (and failed) to accuse Republicans of ever since Donald Trump came down that golden escalator. If so, we’re not just talking about issues of bias or favoritism in the corporate sector. That’s a crime, and the people responsible need to be held accountable for it.

Will they be? A lot of that depends on who actually takes control of the two chambers of Congress in a couple of weeks. The Democrats in Washington have clearly shown no appetite for holding their friends and allies both inside and outside of the government accountable if the actions in question serve their larger cause. (That being the permanent retention of power.) If Google wants to play this game then they need to play by the rules or face the consequences. It’s clearly too late to do anything about this issue before the election, but the internet has a long memory and the executives at Google need to be hauled before some congressional committees and made to show their work. The results will almost certainly not be pretty.