Google continues to bury former President Donald Trump’s campaign website after a Manhattan, New York jury came down with a guilty verdict in the dubious case filed by George Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg.
MRC Free Speech America analyzed Google search results for the eight presidential candidates still in the race Friday. Despite his donation website crashing due to the overwhelming number of visitors following the verdict Thursday, former President Trump was the only candidate whose campaign website did not appear on the first page of search results a day later. All seven other candidates’ websites, including those of President Joe Biden and even Robert F. Kennedy Jr, appeared in the first 10 results when researchers searched for each candidate’s name and the phrase “presidential race 2024.”
“There you go again,” said MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Director Michael Morris. “Google is up to its old censorship antics in an all-important election season. Just like it did in 2022, burying Republican campaign websites in key Senate races, burying its biggest critics and burying the GOP candidate in the Georgia runoff races, Google is burying the leading GOP challenger in the 2024 presidential race from the first page of results.”
The chasmic disparity is alarming, considering that less than one percent of Google searchers click on links that are not on the first page of results, according to Brian Dean, a search engine optimization expert for Backlinko.com.
Google’s latest episode of election interference is especially damning. Both WinRed and donaldjtrump.com were nowhere to be found on the first page of Google Search results even as Trump’s donation page on WinRed was experiencing use overload.
While one might have expected the news of Trump’s guilty conviction last Thursday to flood Google Search results with anything but his website, only three of the top ten results were related to the verdict. The other seven included Trump’s Wikipedia page, the 2024 presidential election Ballotpedia page and various older news articles introducing the candidates.
President Biden and Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign websites appeared fourth in individual search results. Constitution Party candidate Randall Terry’s website similarly appeared fourth.
Democrat candidate Marianne Williamson’s website once again appeared near the top as it has in past MRC Free Speech America studies. Williamson and Green Party candidate Cornell West were the only two candidates whose websites appeared as the first search result. Williamson’s campaign website even appeared a second and third time as the eighth and 23rd results. This is reminiscent of when Williamson’s website appeared in individual searches for Democrat, Republican and Independent presidential campaign websites last November.
Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver’s website appeared tenth, and Green Party Candidate Jill Stein’s website ranked second on the first page of results.
The disappearance of Trump’s websites from page one Google search results is alarming as the importance of where a link ranks in a Google search cannot be overstated. Not only is Google the go-to search engine for most people, holding a market share of nearly 92 percent worldwide, but the higher a search result appears, the more likely a user will click on a particular result, according to Brian Dean, a search engine optimization expert.
Dean conducted a study analyzing how often users click on various rankings of Google search results. His blog, Backlinko, reported in May 2023 that “The #1 Result In Google Gets 27.6% of All Clicks” and it has a “10x higher [Click Through Rate] compared to the #10 result.” Astoundingly, less than one percent (.63%) of users click through to the second page of search results, underscoring the importance of positioning on the first page of search results. Other studies, like one conducted in 2020 by Sistrix, show similar results.
Methodology
For this report, MRC Free Speech America analyzed the May 31 Google search results of “joe biden presidential race 2024,” “marianne williamson presidential race 2024,” “donald trump presidential race 2024,” “robert f. kennedy jr. presidential race 2024,” “jill stein presidential race 2024,” “cornel west presidential race 2024,” “randall terry presidential race 2024,” and “chase oliver presidential race 2024.” MRC Free Speech America created an algorithm to automate this process in a clean environment. A “clean environment” allows for organic search to populate results without the influence of prior search history and tracking cookies.
To determine bias, our researchers looked at Google’s results and recorded the rank(s) of each candidate’s campaign website on the first page of results.
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