Google has responded to claims by US President Donald Trump that the search engine is rigged to prioritise negative news stories about him.
Earlier he tweeted that the company and others were 'supressing conservative voices.'
He claimed Google searches for 'Trump News' showed "only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media."
"In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD".
He also singled out CNN for featuring heavily.
The US cable channel is often criticised by the president for what he perceives as its bias against him.
Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
He also claimed that 96% of Google results were from the "National Left-Wing Media", adding this was "very dangerous".
....results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
But Google's vehemently denied the comments - and said it's 'not used to set a political agenda.'
The search giant said in a statement: "When users type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds.
"Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don't bias our results toward any political ideology.
"Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users' queries.
"We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment."
