Google News

The bias meter value for Google News is -1.31. -6 is the furthest "Left" value and 6 is the furthest "Right" value.
-1.31
Lean Left What does this mean?

How we determined this rating:

  • Independent Review
  • Community Feedback:   ratings
  • AllSides has high confidence in this bias rating.

Unless otherwise noted, this bias rating refers only to online news coverage, not TV, print, or radio content.

Learn about our bias rating methods
Google News
Google News
Bias Rating Lean Left
Type News Media
Region National
Owner Alphabet Inc.
Established 9/4/1998
Website news.google.com
Twitter @google
Facebook Google
Wikipedia Google News
What a Lean Left Bias Rating Means

The source displays media bias in ways that moderately align with liberal, progressive, or left-wing thought and/or policy agendas.

Learn more about Lean Left ratings
Go to Google News
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About Google News's Bias Rating

Google News is a news media source with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ of Lean Left.

What a "Lean Left" Rating Means

Sources with an AllSides Media Bias Rating of Lean Left display media bias in ways that moderately align with liberal, progressive, or left-wing thought and/or policy agendas. A Lean Left bias is a moderately liberal rating on the political spectrum.

Learn more about Lean Left ratings

Bias Reviews

We use multiple methods to analyze sources. Learn how we rate media bias.

AllSides research has found Lean Left bias in Google News dating back to 2018.

Launched in 2006, Google News is one of the most popular news aggregation tools in the world. It has been scrutinized for allegedly suppressing right-leaning and conservative news and opinions while magnifying those on the left. AllSides has done extensive research on Google News bias; in 2023, we found 63% of articles curated on Google News were from the left; this number was 61% in 2022. In 2018, an AllSides audit found Google News was biased 65% toward Left and Left-leaning news sources. 

As of early 2024, AllSides found the majority of news aggregators analyzed Lean Left, including Google News, Apple News, and Bing News.

RELATED: Google News Bias Blogs & Analysis

Google News Biased 63% to the Left: 2023 AllSides Analysis

A 2023 AllSides bias analysis of Google News found the aggregator curates 63% of articles from media outlets on the left.

This is a larger share than in 2022, when 61% of articles on Google News were from liberal outlets. In 2023, 6% of articles were from sources on the right; in 2022, just 3%.  

RELATED: Has Google News’ Bias Moved Further Left?: 2022 and 2023 Compared

RELATED: Amid Google Gemini Controversy, A Look at Google’s History of Bias

The 2023 analysis looked at 974 articles that appeared over a 2-week period in October and November. AllSides found the proportion of media outlets that appeared on Google News’ homepage were as follows:

  • 4% Left-rated
  • 59% Lean Left-rated
  • 16% Center-rated
  • 1% Lean Right-rated
  • 5% Right-rated
  • 15% Not Rated by AllSides

In the analysis, AllSides also looked at six search terms: ”abortion,” “climate change,” “economy,” “election,” “Biden,” and “immigration.”

 For each term, Lean Left-rated outlets accounted for over half of the results, excluding the term “immigration.” Outlets on the right never accounted for more than 12% of the results, except for the term “Biden.”

Out of the 494 homepage articles analyzed, the top sources that appeared were CNN (Lean Left bias), The New York Times (Lean Left bias), Reuters (Center bias), Fox News (Right bias), and Yahoo! News (Lean Left bias). All of the top 10 sources curated were rated Lean Left or Left, other than Reuters and Fox News. 

Read the full PDF report on AllSides’ 2023 Google News Analysis here.

RELATED: Our Google News Bias Analysis Blew Up on X, Here’s How The Media Reacted

Google News Biased 61% to the Left: 2022 AllSides Analysis

A 2022 AllSides Google News Bias Analysis found 61% of media outlets presented on Google News’ homepage over a 5-day period were from sources AllSides rates as on the left, with just 3% from outlets on the right. The search term “election” returned no results from Center-, Lean Right- or Right-rated media outlets in the days leading up to the 2022 midterm elections.

Twenty-eight percent of articles presented by Google News for this search term were from CNN (Left), and 16% of articles were from The New York Times (Lean Left)

These findings corroborated AllSides’ Media Bias Rating of Google News as Lean Left overall. Our analysis assessed content that appeared on Google News during the time of the Nov. 2022 midterm elections, from Oct. 31 - Nov. 4, 2022.

AllSides found about 44% of the articles on Google News’ homepage over a 5-day period were from outlets with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ of Lean Left, 17% were from Left-rated outlets, 25% from the Center, and 3% from those rated Right. The homepage featured no articles from sources AllSides rates as Lean Right over the five-day period. The remaining 11% of articles were from outlets that were Not Rated by AllSides. Google News’ homepage heavily favored content curated from CNN (Left bias), showing stories from this website most often (15% of total stories were from this outlet). 

 

AllSides also identified six selected search terms to include in its analysis: “Trump,” “Election,” “Biden,” “Abortion,” “Crime,” and “Economy.For each search term, Google News’ results from outlets on the left outnumbered outlets from the right and outlets rated Center.

Across topics, 48% of the articles gathered were from Lean Left outlets, and 23% were from Left-rated outlets, 13% were in the Center, 3% were from outlets on the right, and 13% were Not Rated.

The top 10 most prominent media outlets published on Google News encompassed 63% of all coverage (95 out of 151 articles). They are as follows, with the percent of total stories analyzed displayed for each:
 

Learn more about the AllSides Google News Bias Analysis™ and get full results here.

Google News "Top Stories" for Mass Shooting Inquiries Favors Small Number of Left-Leaning Outlets: 2019 AllSides Analysis

AllSides conducted an audit of Google's "Top Stories" section following two mass shootings that occurred in Dayton, OH and El Paso, TX in early August 2019. The findings revealed the first three articles users saw in the "Top Stories" section for shooting-related queries were mostly from CNN and and left-leaning media outlets, reinforcing previous audits completed by AllSides and researchers at Northwestern University.

The audit was reviewed by a multipartisan team of individuals from the left and right. AllSides uses a multi-partisan, balanced, patented system for measuring bias.

AllSides assessed 522 news articles that were featured as one of the top three results in Google’s “Top Stories” section for 10 shooting-related queries over three days.

The audit found:

In addition, nearly half (46%) of results came from just three news websites. CNN (25%), the New York Times (14%) and the Washington Post (7%) appeared in the first three results of the “Top Stories” box most often.
 

Read the full Google bias audit here.

Google News Favors Small Number of Lean Left Media Outlets: 2019 Northwestern University Research

The audit by Northwestern involved researchers collecting Google results for more than 200 queries related to the news (such as “colin kaepernick,” “earthquake,” “tax reform,” or “healthcare.gov”) in November 2017. They took measures to reduce the impact of result personalization and ran each query once per minute for 24 hours. They collected 6,302 unique links to news articles that appeared in the Top Stories section, with each link amounting to an impression each time it appeared.

Researchers found that just 20 news sources account for more than half of article impressions on Google Top Stories.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The above bias ratings are from 2019.
AllSides has since changed its bias ratings for a number of these outlets. As of 2024, USA Today, NPR, and Al Jazeera were rated Lean Left, not Center.

The top 20 percent of sources (136 of 678) accounted for 86 percent of article impressions. The top three accounted for 23 percent: CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Each of these outlets has a Lean Left AllSides Media Bias Rating. Learn more about this study on the AllSides blog.

Google News Biased 65% Toward Left Outlets: 2018 AllSides Analysis

In August 2018, AllSides found Google News was 65% Left, 20% Center, 16% Right. 

The AllSides Google News bias study included 123 different measurements of Google News bias over two weeks, from August 23 to September 5, 2018. Eighty-eight of those measurements assessed the number of links that pointed to media sources AllSides rates as Left, Center, or Right. Because the vast majority of traffic goes to the very first links displayed on Google, AllSides also took into consideration link position. We gave the top 5 links more weight than those that appeared lower on the page.

View the AllSides study here.

 

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Community Feedback

Feedback does not determine ratings, but may trigger deeper review.

As of March 2024, people have voted on the AllSides Media Bias Rating for Google News. On average, those who disagree with our rating think this source has a Lean Left bias.

Confidence Level

Confidence is determined by how many reviews have been applied and consistency of data.

As of March 2024, AllSides has high confidence in our Lean Left rating for Google News. Two or more bias reviews have affirmed this rating or the source is transparent about bias.

Additional Information

Google News is a website and app developed by Google that aggregates news from around the world.

According to the 2014 Pew Research Study, Where News Audiences Fit on the Political Spectrum, 37% Google News readers hold political values to the political left or left-of-center. 20% of Google News's audience is right or right-of-center (compared with 26% of all respondents to the survey). Roughly 43% of Google News's audience is considered mixed or center (compared with 36% of all respondents to the survey).

Conservative Claims of Google and YouTube Bias

In 2023, video platform Rumble, largely viewed as a haven for conservative voices, particularly those that have been banned or censored on YouTube, was the only platform to exclusively stream the August 23 Republican presidential primary debate for free. However, users who searched Google for “GOP debate stream” were provided links to YouTube, Fox News, and news articles about the debate, according to screen recordings of contemporaneous searches reported by The Intercept. Rumble was nowhere on the first page. (The debate was broadcast on Fox News and streamed on Fox Nation, which requires a subscription, and Rumble was the only platform to stream it for free.)

“The first Republican presidential debate was yet another example of Google’s determination to squash competing video platforms,” said Rumble general counsel Michael Ellis, according to The Intercept. “In its own words, Google uses search to highlight other major election events but chose not to offer the same feature to Rumble’s livestream. We look forward to proving Google’s continued anticompetitive conduct in court.” Rumble was involved in discovery in an antitrust lawsuit with Google as of this writing (Oct. 2023).

Google had a different take: “The facts here are very mundane,” said a Google spokesperson. “People could easily find information about where to watch the debate in Google Search results. And as part of our ongoing effort to build dedicated features in Search to more prominently showcase events like debates, we reached out to the RNC and Rumble, but unfortunately it didn’t come together in time to test and create the livestream feature. We’ve already worked with the RNC and Rumble to get this feature set up for the next debate, as we would do with any livestream provider.” 

In August 2018, President Donald Trump claimed Google is “rigged” against him, and that Google is “suppressing voices of conservatives.” In December 2018, Google CEO Sundar Pichai appeared on Capitol Hill and was grilled about bias, which he denied. In July 2019, President Trump held a social media summit to discuss alleged anti-conservative bias by big tech companies like Google, telling attendees "we’re not going to be silenced."

While AllSides has independently verified claims that Google News is biased to the Left, claims have also been made that Google's main search engine, as well as YouTube (which Google owns) are also biased against conservatives. For example, in late June 2019, YouTube removed a video created by Project Veritas (Lean Right media bias rating), a nonprofit founded by conservative James O’Keefe that is dedicated to exposing corruption. The video showed undercover footage of Google executive Jen Gennai discussing the tech giant’s search algorithm. Some of those on the right said Gennai’s comments confirmed Google is biased and that the search giant is taking a role in shaping elections. AllSides found the story was largely ignored by media outlets on the Left.

In October 2017, conservative nonprofit PragerU sued Google and YouTube for "unlawfully censoring its educational videos and discriminating against its right to freedom of speech." The lawsuit cited over 50 PragerU videos with a conservative bent that were “restricted” or “demonetized” by Google and YouTube. A judge threw out the case.

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Google News Ownership and Funding

Funding and ownership do not influence bias ratings. We rate the bias of content only.

Owner: Alphabet Inc.

Articles from Google News

This content was curated by AllSides. See our Balanced Newsfeed.