'Nazism' briefly listed as ideology of Calif. GOP in featured Google search result

Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy criticized Google for a suggested result that appeared on the search engine for part of this week. Click through the gallery for other weird stuff that's popped up through the search engine's "instant answers" feature. less Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy criticized Google for a suggested result that appeared on the search engine for part of this week. Click through the gallery for other weird stuff that's popped up through the ... more Photo: Screenshot Via Twitter Photo: Screenshot Via Twitter Image 1 of / 13 Caption Close 'Nazism' briefly listed as ideology of Calif. GOP in featured Google search result 1 / 13 Back to Gallery

For some time this week, anyone who Googled "California Republican Party" would have their results flanked, on the right-hand side of the page, with a box providing info on the California GOP — a box that listed "Nazism" first and foremost among the party's ideologies.

Google says it was a result of Wikipedia vandalism, not a change made by anyone at Google itself or a sign of entrenched political bias, but some Republican leaders are saying the incident is proof of an anti-conservative slant at the tech giant.

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"Dear @Google," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, wrote on Twitter Thursday, "This is a disgrace #StoptheBias."

"Sadly, this is just the latest incident in a disturbing trend to slander conservatives. These damaging actions must be held to account," he added in a later tweet.

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The featured results were pulled from the Wikipedia page about the California Republican Party and the problematic part has since been removed. The reference to Nazism was added to the Wikipedia page May 24 and removed Wednesday, so it was no longer appearing at the time of McCarthy's tweet.

"This was not the result of any manual change by anyone at Google. We don't bias our search results toward any political party," a Google spokeswoman said in a statement. "We have systems in place that catch vandalism before it impacts search results, but occasionally errors get through, and that's what happened here."

Google said that once it noticed the vandalism, they sped up their normal error-correction process to remove the reference to Nazism.

The company also drew accusations of bias against conservatives with the firing of engineer James Damore in August 2017. Damore authored a controversial memo suggesting that women are less represented in some types of tech jobs because of differences of ability between the sexes.

Filipa Ioannou is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at fioannou@sfchronicle.com and follow her on Twitter