Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) criticized Google’s Sundar Pichai for suppressing the visibility of Breitbart News in Google search results during a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee today. Pichai was present along with the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook.
“Google searches for ‘Joe Biden’ generated approximately 30,000 impressions for Breitbart links. This was on May 1. And after May 5th, both the impressions and the clicks went to zero,” Senator Blackburn noted.
“I hope what you all realize from this hearing is that there is a pattern. You may not believe it exists, but there is a pattern of subjective manipulation of the information that is available to people from your platforms,” she continued.
“What has driven additional attention to this is the fact that more of a family’s functional life is being conducted online. Because of this, more people are realizing that you are picking winners and losers.”
“You’re beginning to insert yourself into these issues of free speech.”
Breitbart News reported on the suppression of Google visibility in July:
After Google’s May core search update on or about May 5, 2020, Google search impressions and search traffic to Breitbart for “Joe Biden” and other Biden-related search terms has gone to zero. Zero. The following graph clearly illustrates the foregoing.
On May 1, Google searches for “Joe Biden” generated approximately 30,000 impressions (views, used as a metric for advertisers) for Breitbart links. After May 5, both impressions and clicks went to zero.
Breitbart News spoke to an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert, a 25-year industry veteran, whose job consists of analyzing traffic data from Google’s own website performance portal, Google Search Console.
The expert, who wished to remain anonymous, said he had never seen anything like this graph — and that it indicates highly probable manipulation on the part of Google.
“I’ve never experienced such a wholesale removal of rank and visibility on specific concepts on a site as I have seen being applied to Breitbart,” said the expert. “Removal is the key, not dropping in rank, which would be an organic devaluing. These ranks are just simply gone, overnight, while other topics have been untouched.”
Breitbart News will continue to report on Google’s censorship of conservative media.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. His new book, #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election, which contains exclusive interviews with sources inside Google, Facebook, and other tech companies, is currently available for purchase.