Google says charges of altering search results to help Hillary Clinton are 'simply false'

Kif Leswing

Jun 11, 2016, 00:30 IST

Earlier this week, YouTube channel SourceFed published a video that accused Google of altering its search engine to benefit Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, based on Google autocomplete suggestions.

On Friday, longtime Google search guru Matt Cutts responded on Twitter, calling the claims "simply false." He also accused the author of the video of failing to reach out for Google's side of the story.

1/ @SourceFed claims "Google has been actively altering search recommendations in favor of Hillary Clinton's campaign." That's simply false.
- Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016

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2/ Their two anecdotes: [hillary clinton in] didn't suggest [hillary clinton indictment] & [hillary clinton cri] didn't suggest crimes.
- Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016

3/ It turns out that lots of people searching for negative things about HRC search for [hillary X], not [hillary clinton X]
- Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016

4/ Here's some live screenshot examples, including [hillary in] returning [hillary indictment] as first suggestion. pic.twitter.com/VEn3A4ef5y
- Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016

5/ And here's some more examples of Autocomplete returning negative suggestions for HRC, including "criminal email" pic.twitter.com/5oczWWvmmU
- Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016

6/ See https://t.co/5avsTVn4ab for a smart write-up about how/why Google Autocomplete appears to avoid "crimes" for all, not just HRC.
- Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016

7/ Also see https://t.co/fLdlJ19BmX for another good take.
- Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016

8/ P.S. @mattlieberman I asked Google's search PR. They couldn't find a record of you reaching out to Google before publishing your video?
- Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016

9/ @mattlieberman this is a super-technical area. Why make a long video of these claims without doing deeper research? It's just not true.
- Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 10, 2016

Well, that's as clear a statement as you can get from a high-ranking Google search official.

Separately, a Google spokesperson provided this statement:

Google Autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause. Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how Autocomplete works. Our Autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person's name. More generally, our autocomplete predictions are produced based on a number of factors including the popularity of search terms.

The original SourceFed video is embedded below: