Daniel Lurie Campaign Paying Google to Run Fake, Anti-Mark Farrell Headlines on Real News Articles

The latest skullduggery in the SF mayor’s race has Google search results for Mark Farrell that make it look like prominent local publications ran headlines declaring “Don’t Trust Mark Farrell.” But the headlines are fake, and the Lurie campaign appears to be paying Google to manipulate them.

If you do any Google searching on SF mayoral candidate Mark Farrell, you might see some shocking headlines. For instance, you may see a search result for a San Francisco Chronicle article that appears to have the headline “Mark Farrell Ethics Violation - Don’t Trust Mark Farrell.” Or you may see a result pointing to an SF Standard article with the blunt headline “Don’t Trust Mark Farrell.”

This is curious, because neither the Chronicle nor the SF Standard has ever published any articles with the headline “Don’t Trust Mark Farrell,” nor any of the words that Google makes it look like these articles say. These are links to real articles published in the SF Standard and Chronicle, but Google allows political campaigns (in this case, the Daniel Lurie for Mayor campaign) to replace headlines and preview text in the search results, to make it appear as if respected publications are declaring “Don’t Trust Mark Farrell.”

Above we see a Google search result indicating that a Chronicle article was published with the headline “Mark Farrell Ethics Violation - Don’t Trust Mark Farrell.” That result does link to a legitimate Chronicle piece published on August 16, but one with the entirely different headline “Mark Farrell says you can trust his campaign finances. A surprise trip to his office left me wondering.” That piece is actually an op-ed by Chronicle columnist Emily Hoeven, but has some dynamite investigative reporting nuggets that are unflattering toward the Farrell campaign, to be sure.



https://sfist.com/2024/08/22/daniel-lurie-campaign-paying-google-to-run-fake-anti-mark-farrell-headlines-on-real-news-articles/