Search engines could already be tilting elections, study says

The experiment was simple: Take a diverse group of undecided voters, let them research the candidates on a Google-esque search engine, then tally their votes -- never mentioning that the search was rigged, giving top link placement to stories supporting a selected candidate. The researchers expected the bias would sway voters, but they were shocked by just how much: Some voters became 20 percent more likely to support the favored candidate. And almost none of the voters caught onto how the results were being skewed. In fact, those who did notice the preferential treatment, the researchers said, felt even more validated that they'd made the right choice.

The series of studies exploring the "search engine manipulation effect," to be published soon in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, highlights the vast and invisible influence that tech giants such as Google, which handles two-thirds of all US searches, can wield on a national scale. That search results color our thinking is nothing new: American companies spend tens of billions of dollars every year to get their sites to the top of the pile. But in an age where learning about candidates is always only one search away, researchers say the effect could wield a worrying level of influence -- and that it has already helped swing some votes.