Conservatives and social media commentators began sharing claims on election night that Google had been projecting a pro-Kamala Harris bias, alleging results mapped where voters could cast their ballot for her but not Trump.
Photos were also shared of the search engine’s homepage, seemingly emblazoned with a massive photo of Harris, as the vice president and former President Donald Trump held out on results overnight.
However, the truth behind these claims was directly disputed by Google after the likes of SpaceX founder and Trump ally Elon Musk began sharing them on X, formerly Twitter.
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The Claim
A post on X by user Doge Designer on November 5, 2024, viewed 45.6 million times, said “BREAKING: Google shows a ‘Where to Vote’ section with a map for Kamala Harris, but not for Donald Trump.
“Google is the biggest corporate donor to the Democratic Party.”
The post included a video of someone searching for “Where can I vote for Harris” and providing a map result. No map result was shown when the same search query was made for Donald Trump.
Elon Musk replied to the post: “Are others seeing this too?” His response was seen 42.8 million times.
Another post by a Tusli Gabbard parody account showed what appeared to be the Google homepage occupied with an image of Kamala Harris.
“Do you think Google is interfering with the election in favor of Kamala Harris ?” the user wrote.
“YES or NO ?”
The Facts
While the Google map result did happen, there is no evidence that Google deliberately engineered results to show where to vote for Harris. The company has said the result occurred because of a similar place name. There is also no evidence the search engine projected a huge photo of Harris on its search page.
In a response post on X sent by Google’s communications team, the maps result had been triggered because of its similarity to a county in Texas and that similar results were produced when searching for where to vote for Trump’s running mate, JD Vance.
“The ‘where to vote’ panel is triggering for some specific searches bc Harris is also the name of a county in TX,” the post said.
“Happens for “Vance” too bc it’s also the name of a county. Fix is coming. Note very few people actually search for voting places this way.”
The same account later posted a message saying the issue had been fixed.
As for the homepage picture, Google’s homepage, beyond changing the Doodle image honoring notable figures and important dates, has not changed its signature white background since 1988 as this recently compiled gallery of homepages shows.
The image of the homepage with Harris appears to have been created by AI, with clear signs of AI text generation next to the image itself and in the search bar.
The Ruling
False.
There is no evidence the Google search results were biased. Google, which says it fixed the search results, said it was caused by the engine returning results for place names, noting a similar result happened when searching for JD Vance.
The image of Harris on the homepage appears to have been AI-generated.
FACT CHECK BY Newsweek’s Fact Check team