Google’s Search Results For Guns Are Getting A Little Wonky

It’s no secret that Google has a political agenda. We all know this, but man. This is wack.

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed (you would’ve had to have been searching for guns on Google’s shopping search results), but for a while there, it totally removed search results for everything with the word “gun” in it. Even TOY guns, you guys.

Google has removed search results for any product that contains the word “gun” in it, including water guns, toy guns, the band “Guns and Roses,” and even “burgundy” from its shopping section.

Google has removed results in its shopping tool for a wide range of terms related to firearms, unwittingly censoring completely unrelated items such as music groups and movies whose titles matched filtered terms.

Google Shopping allows users to search for products from a wide range of online shopping sites to compare prices and offerings. The Internet giant has removed search results for a wide variety of terms, which was discovered by social media users this week.

Google shopping now blocks all search queries with the English word "gun" in it, which can be something of an issue as you can imagine. pic.twitter.com/NL4V00y079

— Best Mom Eva (@mombot) February 27, 2018

That includes words that contain the letters "gun" in them. pic.twitter.com/t8pM1jl0r4

— Best Mom Eva (@mombot) February 27, 2018

If you misspell the "gundam" as "gndam" google shopping then asks you:

Did you mean GUNDAM?

Then, when you click on the link, it does not match any results to the thing it knows you're looking for.

— Best Mom Eva (@mombot) February 27, 2018

Even Guns N’ Roses suffered.

Google has a shopping section. It has come to people's attentions recently that ****ANYTHING WITH "GUN" IN IT, OR PHRASES RELATED TO GUNS**** causes the search results to turn up blank.

The purpose of this thread is to explore the extent of this censorship.

— Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) February 27, 2018

Example 1:
"Gundam" turns up nothing.
"Zaku" has results though.

Despite both of these things being somewhat similar products. pic.twitter.com/gqEnpkQcCh

— Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) February 27, 2018

Example 2:
"Glue Gun"

This is a simple household item used in arts and crafts projects. pic.twitter.com/npvMUcu5ro

— Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) February 27, 2018

Example 3:
If you're a music lover and wanted to buy merchandise related to the musical band "Guns and Roses," too bad. Google's shopping tab will tell you nothing is available. pic.twitter.com/pPelmGUbFQ

— Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) February 27, 2018

Example 4:
Burgundy is a shade of red. A color on the color wheel. But since BurGUNdy has "gun" in its name, you're out of luck if you wanted to buy ANY sort of item in that particular color. pic.twitter.com/IOJOCMgYex

— Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) February 27, 2018

Burgundy was flagged, you guys. ‘Cause BurGUNdy. GUNZ!

So yeah. Google is fine with all sorts of things that'll likely get you on a federal watch list, but video games with the word "gun" in them are a no-no. pic.twitter.com/qP2rSUK62l

— Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) February 27, 2018

Another nail in this Google "gun censorship" coffin? Let's say you fuck up and make a typo:
> "sex psitols" ACTUALLY GETS YOU RESULTS.
> but if you correct it to "sex pistols"? Gone. Nothing.

Google did a half-assed job in their empty effort to "protect" people from guns. pic.twitter.com/AURD24rH5w

— Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) February 27, 2018

Over at https://t.co/J6ePOTG7Fk they've got their shit together.

> They STILL hide results for things like "pistol" and "rifle" (typo trick works for both)
> But they actually treat you like a normal person and don't try to fucking shelter you from the word "GUN" like Google is. pic.twitter.com/Ql3i1Nqe39

— Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) February 27, 2018

The good news? Google has tweaked it a bit.

UPDATE: Google has "readjusted" their algorithms. "Burgundy" and "Gundams" and everything else mentioned earlier today? is back. pic.twitter.com/J589YjmQXV

— Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) February 27, 2018

Well, I wouldn’t say EVERYTHING.

^^ CORRECTION: I got too excited. =(
Thanks to some help from my Twitter followers – it APPEARS that Google has addressed the "gun" fiasco going on in their shopping tab by giving the word "gun" back.

They're still clamping down on "pistols" "rifles" and other related words. pic.twitter.com/fUh6St0Sqm

— Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) February 27, 2018

The Breitbart article provided this update:

Update: As of late Tuesday afternoon, Google has restored many of the Google Shopping search results discussed in this article, such as water guns. Certain search terms like “AR-15” and “revolver” still display no results. The original article follows.

It’s true. I tried a few words. Here’s what happened.

Google provided this statement to Breitbart tech:

We are experiencing an error in our Shopping results and we are working to address this issue. We have not changed our policy on the promotion of guns, gun parts or gun components.

So there you have it. Weird stuff going on…

h/t Breitbart