Google search feature exploited to lead abortion seekers astray, report claims

news.com.au

In a number of US states, Google Maps search results could be pointing women seeking abortions to pregnancy crisis centres that don’t do terminations but rather discourage women from having abortions, according to a joint report by Gizmodo and Damn Joan.

One prominent group that pushes girls and women towards giving birth gets into abortion seekers’ search results by buying keywords from Google, the report claims.

When users hit the Google Maps tab, these clinics appears with a pin dropped at their location.

The report’s author used the online query, “Where can I get an abortion near me?” in different markets around the country.

In 20 cities across the US, in all but two states the pro-life crisis pregnancy centres were “offered up as abortion clinic options whenever that sentence was entered,” author Robin Marty wrote. Even though they don’t provide abortion services and actively campaign against them.

She says Google is getting gamed.

“Google itself offers a number of practices to improve a listing’s rankings in the results, such as entering extensive business info, full contact info, photos, and responding to reviews — as well as using their Google My Business suite of tools to maintain their profiles,” she wrote.

“Because of mostly unmonitored and unlimited user intervention, not every result is actually an abortion clinic, and many are actually trying to deceive potential patients into believing they are.”

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The tech giant has a checkered history with the politically charged issue of abortion. It’s not the first time the company has been accused of being co-opted by pro-life interests.

In 2014, an advocacy group called NARAL Pro-Choice America, which works to oppose restrictions on abortion, found that the search term “abortion clinics” led users to pro-life crisis centres about 79 per cent of the time.

The group pressured Google to stop accepting advertising money from such centres which allowed them to appear at the top of search results as a paid ad but had a similar appearance to organic results.

But it appears such organisations are now taking advantage of Google Maps ranking system, critics say.

Given that most of us have become reliant on services like Google to find businesses and services around us, this is a legitimate problem.

“We don’t share more information on how local rankings work to minimise people gaming the system,” Google Communications Manager Liz Davidoff told Gizmodo, saying the company was looking into the allegations raised.

“We strive for business results that are relevant, accurate and help users find what they’re looking for.”