Conservative website Western Journal says that Google filtered the site from its news search tool ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
The Western Journal provided screenshots to Breitbart News that show the site’s disappearance from Google News. Searches for other conservative websites continue to return results, but searches for Western Journal currently do not, despite the fact that the website has a Google News publisher account.
The apparent removal of the site from Google News results coincided with a drop in Google traffic, shortly before the midterm elections.
The CEO of LiftTable media, Western Journal’s parent company, showed Breitbart News an email exchange with Google’s technical support team. After initially saying that the problem had been caused by a technical issue, a Google representative told the CEO that they were “investigating the issue.”
However, Google’s representative then went dark. After eight days and numerous requests for updates from the Western Journal, they have not responded.
The conservative site, which frequently documents anti-conservative bias from tech companies, remains delisted from Google News.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently testified before Congress where he was pressed on the topic of anti-conservative bias by numerous representatives including GOP Reps. Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz.
This followed a year of leaks for the company that shed light on its political biases, including leaked footage of the tech giant’s executives’ reaction to the 2016 election and and “The Good Censor,” an internal research document admitting that the company has “shifted towards censorship” in response to global political trends. More recently, leaked emails from within Google revealed a plot to strip ad revenue from Breitbart News.
Despite these regular leaks, Google’s CEO told Congress that he leads the company “without political bias.”
Breitbart News reached out to Google for comment on this story.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter, Gab.ai and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to allumbokhari@protonmail.com.
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