Google to lower rankings for Russian sites

GOOGLE will downgrade stories from sites owned by the Russian government in response to fears that they interfered in the US election.

Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, said the search engine needed to tackle the spread of misinformation.

The sites that it will “derank” on its search results include Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik – two of Russia’s biggest media outlets. The websites said Google’s move was a form of censorship but US intelligence agencies have previously described RT as a “state-run propaganda machine”.

Speaking at the Halifax International Security Forum, Mr Schmidt singled out the two sites, saying: “We’re working on… deranking those kinds of sites. I am strongly not in favour of censorship. I am very strongly in favour of ranking. It’s what we do. It’s a very le- gitimate question as to how we rank, A or B, right? And we do the best we can in millions and millions of rankings every day.” Mr Schmidt did not reveal when the change to the search engine’s algorithm would be made.

RT was implicated in a report by US intelligence agencies looking into the Russian government’s attempt to tip the US presidential election in favour of Donald Trump.