Google dismisses Brexiteer claims it favours pro-Remain news outlets, saying ‘quality and relevance’ dictate results

Google has denied that it picks its search results based on “political viewpoints”, after it was criticised by pro-Brexit campaigners who said it failed to display enough stories supporting their cause.

The company says it chooses its stories based on “the quality and relevance of content” and that it is unable to detect political viewpoints, let alone choose its search results based on them.

Google’s response comes after it was accused of being biased for not promoting enough pro-Brexit news sources when people search for information about the UK leaving the European Union.

The accusations emerged following a new report that examined which news organisations show up most often when people search for a variety of Brexit-related topics.

A study from content marketing company Searchmetrics found the BBC, The Guardian and The Independent showing most regularly when users searched. That means “the Google search results are more likely to feature pro-Remain coverage, with pro-Brexit reports in The Daily Express, The Daily Telegraph or The Sun appearing less frequently,” said Stephen Bench-Capon, senior content marketing manager at the site.

Those findings led a number of pro-Brexit websites to suggest that the results could be the consequence of bias against the campaign to leave the EU.

MPs also claimed the findings were the consequence of Google being “biased towards left-leaning, anti-Brexit news sites”, and that Google “needs to show us the world as it is, not how they want it to be”.

But Mr Bench-Capon suggested when summarising the study that the prominence of websites like the BBC was actually the consequence of Google’s focus on “expertise, authority and trust” in its search results.

“The BBC’s strength for Brexit searches strongly suggests that Google considers the BBC the most authoritative, trusted source of information for these topics,” he wrote.

Google says that it values other topics than the political viewpoint of websites when it chooses what shows in its search results.

“We focus on the quality and relevance of content, not political viewpoint or ideology,” a Google spokesperson told The Independent.

“Our algorithms analyse hundreds of different factors like freshness and originality of content to try to deliver results that are relevant and useful; there is no favour or signal for political point of view.

“Our algorithms are not able to detect perspectives, much less use them in any way to decide what to show our users.”