Google says its eliminating Autocomplete suggestions that target candidates or voting

The company says that it will now remove any Autocomplete predictions that seem to endorse or oppose a candidate or a political party, or that make a claim about voting or the electoral process. That would mean eliminating predictions like you can vote by phone, you cant vote by phone or anything suggesting that you donate to a party or candidate.

Users will still be able to search for information around voting or candidates you just wont see those queries automatically, and it should become much harder for a candidate or party to use Autocomplete to drive users to make a desirable search.

David Graff, Googles senior director of global policy and standards, said this is merely an extension of the companys existing policies, and not so much a completely new policy or philosophical approach.

Graff also described this as a conservative approach, one in which some innocuous suggestions will probably be eliminated so that Google doesnt risk allowing misinformation around the election from sneaking in.

Pandu Nayak, who heads Googles search quality team, also said this policy will leave the vast majority of Autocomplete suggestions completely untouched.

The other changes and progress that Google is highlighting today include the formation of an Intelligence Desk, a team of analysts that monitors the news and identifies potential information threats; the fact that Google can now identify breaking news moments in just a few minutes, compared to 40 minutes a few years ago; new programs designed to prevent vandalism on Wikipedia from sneaking onto the Knowledge Graph panels that appear alongside search results; and fact-check labels in Google Images.