In 2014, Google stopped accepting advertisements from anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers (CPC) because they were creating intentionally deceitful ads, a clear violation of Google's terms of service, in order to mislead abortion seekers into thinking they were an abortion provider. Although they can no longer manipulate ads, these same CPCs have found a new way to use Google to their advantage.
According to a report by
Gizmodo,
CPCs are creating business listings that falsely portray themselves as abortion clinics so they will come up in Google Maps search results when women search for abortion providers. Then, they use Google My Business suite of tools and other best practices to manipulate their rankings so they can push actual clinics further down the list of search results.
Please sign this petition urging Google to investigate this manipulation and be transparent with the public about what they are doing to rectify the problem.In states where abortion access is limited due to clinic closures, the manipulation of Google search results can create a crisis for abortion seekers. For example, the only clinic left in Western Ohio comes up last when you search "Where can I get an abortion near me?" in Google.
Google has been notified about the problem and has said it will investigate, but that's not enough. It must show that it is holding these crisis pregnancy centers accountable for
intentionally messing with women's constitutional right to an abortion.
Please sign this petition asking Google to be transparent about what actual steps they are taking to prevent CPCs from gaming Google Maps in order to limit abortion access.