A rumor spread in late July 2024 positing that Google purposely and manually sought to hide or suppress both suggested phrases and search results for former U.S. President Donald Trump's name, with even X owner Elon Musk getting into the discussion.
In response to these claims, on July 30, Google issued a five-post threaded statement from its Google Communications X account. The statement hit on issues regarding three main points: questions about search predictions for the July 13, 2024, Trump assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania; search predictions for Trump's name; and search-result discrepancies for both Trump and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.
"Over the past few days, some people on X have posted claims that Search is 'censoring' or 'banning' particular terms," Google's statement began. "That's not happening, and we want to set the record straight."
At the same time, however, the company's statement also acknowledged uncovering what it called "bugs."
The controversy involving Google occurred around the same time Meta acknowledged an incorrectly-flagged photo on Facebook showing Trump's assassination attempt. Meta communications spokesperson Dani Lever posted on X: "This was an error. This fact check was initially applied to a doctored photo showing the secret service agents smiling, and in some cases our systems incorrectly applied that fact check to the real photo. This has been fixed and we apologize for the mistake."
Trump himself responded on his Truth Social platform to the claims about Google and Meta, alleging without evidence the two tech giants were "rigging the election."
As with many online rumors, honest users genuinely looking to learn the facts of this subject would do well with reading through all of the available data before establishing conclusions. Sometimes with rumors of a political nature, the facts don't shake out to completely validate one side of the aisle or the other.
Search Predictions for Trump Assassination Attempt
On July 28 and 29, numerous X users posted evidence showing Google displayed search predictions for assassination attempts of past presidents, with the exception of Trump's. To be clear, this matter involved complaints about predictions displayed to users as they type, before performing a search — not search results themselves.
For example, one X user posted screenshots of Google suggesting search phrases for the assassination attempts of presidents Ronald Reagan and Harry S. Truman but no relevant predictions for Trump. The user added, "Okay, this really is weird. Why is Google search hiding the Trump assassination attempt…?"
In Google's threaded statement posted on X, the company explained its autocomplete feature and acknowledged an "issue" regarding search predictions for the Trump assassination attempt:
Autocomplete is just a tool to help you complete a search quickly. Regardless of what predictions it shows at any given moment, you can always search for whatever you want and get easy access to results, images and more.
Here's what happened, why and how we responded to it.
First, Autocomplete wasn't providing predictions for queries about the assassination attempt against former President Trump. That's because it has built-in protections related to political violence — and those systems were out of date.
After the horrific events in Butler, PA, those predicted queries should have appeared but didn't. Once the issue was flagged, we started working on improvements, and they're already rolling out.
The second post in Google's thread on X displayed a screenshot showing numerous predictions after simply typing in the first four letters of Trump's name.
After Google released this statement on X, Snopes confirmed that, as of July 31, for at least some users, Google search predictions for the Trump assassination attempt correctly displayed under the search bar.
In a statement to The Associated Press, a Google spokesperson said the company enables automated protections regarding violent topics such as searches for theoretical assassination attempts. The AP's reporting also included comments from two professionals with knowledge of the world of tech, who explained from a technical standpoint the facts behind this subject – including the complex nature of how Google's search platform works – without any political cheerleading. We contacted both professionals by email and will update this story if we receive responses.
Search Predictions for 'President Donald'
On July 28, Elon Musk posted on X, "Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump! Election interference?"
Musk's post featured a screenshot showing that typing "president donald" into Google's search bar, without quotes, displayed only two predictions for users: "president donald duck" and "president donald regan." The latter, misspelled result also displayed information with the prediction including former U.S. President Ronald Reagan's name, photo and attribution as the 40th U.S. president. This matter did not involve search results themselves.
We located no evidence that this matter constituted some sort of purposeful "election interference" on Google's part, as Musk baselessly claimed.
In response to claims like Musk's, the third X post in Google's statement read, "This particular issue was a bug that spanned the political spectrum, also affecting queries for several past presidents, such as former President Obama, as you can see in the attached image. Typing 'vice president k' was also showing no predictions. We've made an update that has improved these predictions across the board."
As of July 31, tests in Google Chrome's "incognito" mode, including typing "president donald" into Google's search bar but not yet performing the search, displayed at the top of the list Trump's name, photo and the label "45th U.S. President." Our tests did not display any additional predictions for Trump:
Unlike our tests of Trump's name, we noted our tests of "president barack" displayed numerous additional predictions for former U.S. President Barack Obama.
Meanwhile, a test of typing "donald trump" instead of "president donald" displayed a seemingly normal list of predictions, including about his assassination attempt:
Further, we also noted search predictions displayed when typing "president hillary" compared to "president donald," even though former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not win a presidential election. She did, however, experience a longer career in the world of American politics than Trump, which might explain the additional results.
Search Results for Politicians' Names
Other users subsequently claimed performing searches for Trump's name displayed news results for Harris, while searches for Harris showed only news about Harris.
For example, one X user claimed on July 29, "Why is it that when you Google Donald Trump, you get news about Kamala Harris but when you Google Kamala Harris, you don't get news about Donald Trump?"
The user's post displayed screenshots highlighting areas in Google search results showing topics — in this case the names of Harris, Trump or both of them.
Google posted in its X thread, "Some people also posted that searches for 'Donald Trump' returned news stories related to 'Kamala Harris.' These labels are automatically generated based on related news topics, and they change over time." The post also featured examples of how searching for various terms might display results for a broader range of related topics.
We noted varying results in our tests performed on July 30 and 31, after Google issued its statement on X. Again, as Google said, the labels where topics such as politicians' names display "change over time."
For example, one Google search for "donald trump" displayed "top stories" with a label naming both Harris and Trump, as well as a majority of article headlines naming Trump.
In another example, a search for "kamala harris" displayed "top stories" about Harris.
In Google's fifth and final post on X, the company posted, "Overall, these types of prediction and labeling systems are algorithmic. While our systems work very well most of the time, you can find predictions that may be unexpected or imperfect, and bugs will occur."
Then, the final post included a remark possibly written with Musk in mind, seeing as Google posted the thread on X. The end of the post read, "Many platforms, including the one we're posting on now, will show strange or incomplete predictions at various times. For our part, when issues come up, we will make improvements so you can find what you're looking for, quickly and easily. We appreciate the feedback."
Snopes reporter Jack Izzo contribute to this article.