This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Google has altered autocomplete suggestions in its search engine after it was alerted to antisemitic, sexist and racists entries.



Google’s autocomplete feature aims to suggest common searches after a user enters one or more words into the site’s search box or address bar of its Chrome browser.

Typing the phrase “are Jews” into Google, the search engine suggested “evil”, for “are women” it again suggested “evil” and for “are Muslims” it suggested “bad”, an Observer article reported.

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On Monday the searches for Jews and women no longer returned those results, although the “are Muslims bad” autocomplete was still present.

A Google spokesperson said: “We took action within hours of being notified on Friday of the autocomplete results.” Google did not comment on its decision to alter some but not all those raised in the article.

It said: “Our search results are a reflection of the content across the web. This means that sometimes unpleasant portrayals of sensitive subject matter online can affect what search results appear for a given query. These results don’t reflect Google’s own opinions or beliefs – as a company, we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures.

“Autocomplete predictions are algorithmically generated based on users’ search activity and interests. Users search for such a wide range of material on the web – 15% of searches we see every day are new. Because of this, terms that appear in autocomplete may be unexpected or unpleasant. We do our best to prevent offensive terms, like porn and hate speech, from appearing, but we acknowledge that autocomplete isn’t an exact science and we’re always working to improve our algorithms.”

This is not the first time Google and others’ autocomplete and search algorithms have caused offence. An auto-suggested photo tag within Google’s Photos service in July 2015 labelled two black teenagers as “Gorillas”. Google apologised and said it was working on “longer term fixes” around the recognition of dark-skinned faces as well as the linguistics of photo labels.



In May 2015, Google apologised when the White House was returned as a result for searches for “nigger house” and “nigger king” within Google maps.

Google declined to explain why the results occurred but a spokesperson said: “Some inappropriate results are surfacing in Google Maps that should not be, and we apologise for any offence this may have caused.”

In April this year Google apologised after a search for “unprofessional hairstyles for work” yielded image results showing predominantly black women with natural hair, while searching for “professional” ones returned pictures of coiffed, white women.

In June, Google’s image search also caused offence by returning criminal mugshots for searches of “three black teenagers” but not for “three white teenagers”.

Google has also previously denied “conspiracy theories” accusing it of censoring its search results to please the Conservative party in exchange for a deal over its taxes.