A vulnerability in Google’s search engine reportedly allowed individuals to maliciously remove specific web pages from search results, potentially enabling targeted suppression of information.
404Media reports that journalist Jack Poulson has exposed a significant vulnerability in Google’s search engine that permitted the targeted removal of web pages from search results. The vulnerability, which Google has since fixed, was exploited by individuals or organizations seeking to suppress negative information about themselves or others.
Poulson stumbled upon the issue when he noticed that two of his own articles had been completely blacklisted from Google’s search results. “We only found it by complete coincidence,” Poulson told 404 Media. “I happened to be Googling for one of the articles, and even when I typed in the exact title in quotes it wouldn’t show up in search results anymore.”
The vulnerability was linked to Google’s Refresh Outdated Content tool, which allows users to submit URLs for recrawling and re-listing after an update. By capitalizing different letters in the URL submitted through this tool, it was possible to cause the delisting of specific web pages.
Poulson’s discovery was particularly concerning as the only two articles on his newsletter that had been blacklisted were related to tech CEO Delwin Maurice Blackman, who had been arrested on a felony domestic violence charge in 2021. Poulson had published an article about the arrest in 2023, and Blackman had subsequently attempted to suppress the story through various means, including lawsuits and DMCA takedown requests.
Google confirmed the issue in an email to 404 Media, stating, “This tool helps ensure our search results are up to date. We’re vigilant in monitoring abuse, and we worked quickly to roll out a fix for this specific issue, which was only impacting a tiny fraction of web pages.”
The Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting journalists’ rights, had also chronicled Poulson’s fight against censorship. Ahmed Zidan, the foundation’s Deputy Director of Audience, discovered that an article about Poulson and Blackman’s conflict had also been blacklisted from Google.
Zidan’s investigation revealed that someone had made repeated requests, starting in May and ending in June, to recrawl the article about Poulson and Blackman, each time with a different capitalization of letters in the URL. When Google attempted to index the URLs with tweaked capitalization, it encountered a 404 error, leading to the de-indexing of all variations, including the legitimate article.
While it is difficult to determine who made the re-indexing requests, as the Refresh Outdated Content tool does not tag the person making the request, the targeted nature of the blacklisted articles suggests a deliberate attempt to suppress information related to Blackman.
The potential implications of this vulnerability are significant, as it could have been used by high-profile individuals, politicians, or even governments to suppress negative information about themselves in a targeted manner. Reputation management companies, which exist to help the wealthy and powerful control their online image, could have easily exploited this bug.
For journalists, discoverability is crucial, and being blacklisted from Google search can severely impact a story’s reach. “It’s basically just silent censorship and who knows if there’s some other variant of this that exists…any child could do this. And it’s just shocking to me that a company as technical as Google would have such a simple bug,” Poulson said. “If your article doesn’t appear in Google search results, in many ways it just doesn’t exist.”
Long before the discover of this vulnerability, Google itself has chosen winners and losers with its search algorithm. As Breitbart News proved with an in depth investigation of the internet giant’s censorship practices, Google purged Breitbart from search results leading up to the 2020 election:
Search visibility is a key industry measure of how findable a publisher’s content is in Google search. New data shows that Google has suppressed Breitbart’s search visibility by 99.7 percent since 2016.
On April 4, 2016, Breitbart ranked in the top ten search positions (i.e., on the first page of Google search results) for 355 key search terms; but now, as of July 20, 2020, Breitbart ranks in the top ten search positions for only one search term. And, on April 4, 2016, Breitbart ranked in the top 100 search positions for 16,820 key search terms; but now, as of July 20, 2020, Breitbart ranks in the top 100 search positions for only 55 search terms.
Moreover, organic Google search traffic to Breitbart (measured by unique visitors) is down 63 percent when comparing the first half of 2016 with the first half of 2020.
Read more at 404Media here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
