FILE PHOTO: The logo of Alphabet Inc's Google outside its office in Beijing, China August 8, 2018. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Google disputed U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that the search engine behemoth was displaying only negative news about the president when searching for his name, saying the company does not favor search results for political purposes.

“When users type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds,” Google, whose parent company is Alphabet, said in a statement. “Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology. Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users’ queries. We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment.”