Skip to main content

New Google algorithm lowers search rankings for Holocaust denial sites

After facing considerable backlash over its most popular product, Search, Google has made some major changes.

Earlier this week, we reported that the first result for a query in the U.K. on whether the Holocaust happened claimed it did not — and that the result was returned from a white supremacist website. Now due to some alterations in its search algorithm, these sites are no longer the top results — they have not been removed, but their rankings are effectively lower.

Recommended Videos

Initially, the results only moved down a few spots in search rankings. It’s not the first time Google has been in hot water for its auto-complete and search results — an earlier review by The Guardian found how some auto-complete results suggested searching for “are jews evil,” “are women evil,” and “are muslims bad.”

Before Google issued its fix, several top results answered the queries about the Holocaust’s legitimacy in the affirmative with links to anti-Semitic and hate websites, with one top result even offering reasons as to “why Hitler was one of the good guys.”

When we reached out to Google, the company said its mission is to offer users diverse content from a variety of sources, but it doesn’t always “get it right.”

“Google was built on providing people with high-quality and authoritative results for their search queries,” a spokesperson told Digital Trends. “We strive to give users a breadth of diverse content from variety of sources and we’re committed to the principle of a free and open web. Judging which pages on the web best answer a query is a challenging problem and we don’t always get it right.”

When “non-authoritative information” ranks high in its results, the company says it develops scaleable and automated methods to fix the problem, “rather than manually removing these one by one.”

“We recently made improvements to our algorithm that will help surface more high quality, credible content on the web,” the spokesperson said. “We’ll continue to change our algorithms over time in order to tackle these challenges.”

Tech companies are increasingly facing criticism for perpetuating fake news. Facebook and Google are taking the issue seriously and have pledged to fix it — the former’s plan includes hiring a team of fact-checkers to eliminate fake news in its feed.

Article first published on 12-20-2016. Updated on 12-27-2016 by Julian Chokkattu: This article initially said Google removed holocaust-denying sites from its search rankings, but we have clarified it to say the search algorithm has ranked these sites lower — you can still find these sites on Google. We apologize for the error. 

Julian Chokkattu
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Julian is the mobile and wearables editor at Digital Trends, covering smartphones, fitness trackers, smartwatches, and more…
Google Gemini set to close gap on ChatGPT with rumored new feature
Gemini Live App on the Galaxy S25 Ultra broadcast to a TV showing the Gemini app displaying the transcribe of a conversation and the steps taken

The Gemini app offers a whole bunch of useful things, but it's lacking one thing: Video analysis based on uploads from your PC or phone. That might be about to change, though, as looking into the APK code reveals that Google is working on a video upload feature. This could soon help Gemini analyze and summarize videos uploaded directly by users; it'd also help it rival ChatGPT, which already offers such a feature.

Android Authority went on a deep dive into the APK source code of the Google app beta and came up with some interesting findings. Given that this was found in the official Google app, there's a good chance it'll eventually make it into Gemini, but just to be extra safe, read the following with a little bit of skepticism.

Read more
Google Maps’ new feature sees Android play catchup to iOS
Samsung Galaxy S24 in Marble Gray showing Google Maps.

Android users are getting their first glimpse of a new operating system feature while using Google Maps, as the app is the first to make use of the Live Updates ability that was added for Android 16. The feature will give users updated information in their status bar so they can keep track of ongoing activity such as following directions using maps.

Similar to Apple's Live Activities system, the Android function can potentially be used by a range of apps but has first been seen in Google Maps. "Live Updates are a new class of notifications that help users monitor and quickly access important ongoing activities," Android developers explained in a post highlighting the feature when it was first announced.

Read more
Google Photo power users will love this leaked new feature
Someone holding a Pixel 9 Pro, running the Google Photos app.

If you're a frequent phone photographer, then you already know how difficult it can be to sort through a huge number of pictures taken in rapid succession. The Google Photo Stacks feature helps with this, but its interface has never been the easiest to use. An incoming update could change all of that with a simpler contextual menu.

First spotted by Android Authority in an APK teardown, the update introduces an arrow beside the photo stack instead of relying on the upward swipe. If you're dealing with a lot of pictures, it's an easy way to select your favorite one and get rid of the rest without individually deleting them.

Read more