Shares of Alphabet (GOOGL) seemed to feel little effect Tuesday from President Donald Trump's tweets accusing the web behemoth of rigging Google search results in order to portray the nation's chief executive in a negative light.
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Trump added his voice to a growing chorus of conservatives who accuse social media companies of favoring liberal viewpoints. He said Google search results give preference to negative stories about him.
Shares of Google-parent Alphabet were off fractionally Tuesday to close at 1,245.86.
"This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!" Trump said in a tweet early Tuesday. It was one in a series of Trump claims of bias on the part of a news or social media company.
"Google search results for 'Trump News' shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media," he said. "In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD."
Trump's Tweets
Here are the original tweets from Trump:
Google search results for "Trump News" shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
....results on "Trump News" are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
The broadside follows the president's Aug. 24 claim that social media "giants" are "silencing millions of people." Such accusations — along with assertions that the news media and Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia meddling probe are biased against him — have been a chief Trump talking point.
Google's Response
Google issued a written statement saying its searches give users relevant answers.
"Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don't bias our results toward any political ideology," the statement said. "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."
Charges that social media platforms have censored conservatives have risen. Facebook (FB) and Twitter (TWTR) try to curb the reach of conspiracy theorists, disinformation campaigns, foreign political meddling and abusive posters.
Google News rankings have sometimes surfaced unconfirmed and erroneous reports in the early minutes of tragedies. It happens when there is little information to populate its searches.
Tighter Requirements On Google Search Results
Google has since tightened its requirements for inclusion in news rankings. It has purged outlets that "conceal their country of origin" and relies more on authoritative outlets. The moves, however, have led to charges from less-established outlets of censorship.
Google currently says it ranks news based on the "freshness" and "diversity" of the stories. Trump-favored outlets such as Fox News routinely appear in results.
Eric Schmidt, Alphabet's former chief executive officer, supported Hillary Clinton against Trump during the last election. Unsubstantiated claims alleged the company buried negative search results about her during the election. Scores of Google employees entered government to work under President Barack Obama.
White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow, responded to a question about the tweets. He said the administration is going to do "investigations and analysis" into the issue. He stressed, though, that they're "just looking into it."
Fox Business Report
Trump's comment followed a report Monday from Fox Business that claimed 96% of Google News results for "Trump" came from the "national left-wing media." The segment cited the conservative PJ Media site. The report said its analysis was "not scientific" but suggested "a pattern of bias against right-leaning content."
The PJ Media analysis "is in no way scientific," said Joshua New, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Data Innovation.
"This frequency of appearance in an arbitrary search at one time is in no way indicating a bias or a slant," New said.
Search platforms such as Google or Facebook "have a business incentive not to lower the ranking of a certain publication because of news bias. Because that lowers the value as a news platform," New said.
News search rankings use factors including "use timeliness, accuracy, the popularity of a story, a user's personal search history, their location, quality of content, a website's reputation — a huge amount of different factors," New said.
The post Google Feels Little Effect From Trump Claims Of Search Rigging appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.
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