Google has announced that it has addressed an issue in its search engine that caused a “Where to Vote” panel containing a map of polling places to appear for some specific voting-related searches, but not for others. The tech giant even used the word “fixed” to address the issue, despite the fact that Google Search is working correctly and as designed. In doing so, it fueled baseless conspiracy theories that Google is displaying intentionally biased results.
The issue was highlighted by Elon Musk with an Posted an emoji and two Google searches showing the difference.
The problem, Musk and his supporters say, was users searching for “Where can I vote for Harris?” A map display will appear asking you to enter your address to find your local polling place. But someone typing the same query for Trump will only see a selection of top stories and other standard search results.
However, the proposed conspiracy has no effect, and given that “Harris” is also a place name (a county in Texas) and Trump is not, the search engine is not working effectively as intended. Google has confirmed this with X. As Google pointed out in an X post Tuesday afternoon, a similar map appears when users search for “Where can I vote for Vance?” (President Trump's running mate) “Vance” is also the name of a county.
This explanation should have been enough to debunk the conspiracy circulating on X that Google is showing biased results. Despite this clarification, Google has decided to change when and how the “Vote for” panel appears in response to these searches, and the company has taken responsibility for the mistake it made. I pretended to be there.
In a post to X at 3:22 p.m. ET on Tuesday, the search giant said a fix was coming, adding that few people actually search for voting information by adding the county's name to the query. At 3:38 p.m. ET, Google posted, “Update: This issue has been fixed.”
As expected, Google's choice of words in saying it had “resolved” the problem raised questions from those who tend to believe that Google is somehow trying to influence the election. Users of X questioned why Google needed to “fix” the problem if they hadn't done anything wrong. Others continued to condemn Google's mistakes and proposed various punitive measures, including fines and lawsuits.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.