“We know that if there’s a negative autocomplete suggestion in the list, it will draw somewhere between five and 15 times as many clicks as a neutral suggestion,” Epstein said. In September 2016, Epstein released findings, published through Russian news agency Sputnik News, that indicated Google had suppressed negative autocomplete search results relating to Hillary Clinton. If Google tweaks its algorithm to show more positive search results for a candidate, the searcher may form a more positive opinion of that candidate. He believes, based on systematic research, that Google has the power to rig elections through something he calls the search engine manipulation effect (SEME).Įpstein conducted five experiments in two countries to find that biased rankings in search results can shift the opinions of undecided voters. Robert Epstein from the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology has spent four years trying to reverse engineer Google’s search algorithms.
