New research from search engine optimization platform Searchmetrics has revealed that when you search for Brexit-related terms in Google, most of the results will feature anti-Brexit coverage.
The research looked at Google’s UK search results on desktop for 5,000 Brexit-related search terms in October 2019.
According to the research, more than half of the Brexit search market share came from three anti-Brexit sources – the BBC (for which a 2018 study revealed an “overwhelming” bias against Brexit from the corporation), The Guardian (whose readers are almost unanimously against Brexit), and The Independent (which has endorsed Remain).
Collectively just these three anti-Brexit sources have a 50.7% of the Brexit search market share with the breakdown as follows:
- BBC: 29.4% Brexit search market share
- The Guardian: 12.4% Brexit search market share
- The Independent: 8.9% Brexit search market share
The research also shows that The Guardian appears in the top 10 Google Search results for Brexit-related terms almost three times as often as any other source. In total, The Guardian appeared in these search results for 3,240 of the 5,000 searches – 64.8% of the time.
In addition to this, The Guardian appears in the Google News box at the top of these Brexit-related search results 20% of the time which is more than twice as many times as other newspapers.
The research acknowledges that “the prominence of The Guardian means that the Google Search results are more likely to feature pro-remain coverage, with pro-Brexit reports in the Daily Express, Telegraph or Sun appearing less frequently.”
Another area where these stats highlight Google’s tendency to show anti-Brexit coverage is the top 10 ranking stats for political parties when searching for these Brexit keywords. Parties that support Leave (the Conservative Party and the Brexit Party) appear in the top 10 just 17% of the time while parties that support Remain (the Liberal Democrat Party, the Labor Party, and the Scottish National Party) appear 46% of the time which is almost three times as frequently.
