A Jewish heritage museum has suggested that Google is making money from Holocaust deniers because the museum is paying to prevent a Holocaust-denying website from appearing at the top of the search results for "did the Holocaust happen."
When this phrase or a similar one is searched, Google lists at the top of the page a link to a white supremacist, neo-Nazi site that denies the Holocaust ever occurred.
The Breman Museum, located in Atlanta, Georgia, has been paying to have its website advertised when the phrase is searched on Google rather than the neo-Nazi one. The marketing director of the museum described it as "nauseating" that Google would promote such hateful and false websites.
By having to pay to have the museum's site advertised for Holocaust denial searches, Google is profiting off of Holocaust denial, the museum's marketing director told the Guardian.
David Schendowich said it was nonsense for Google to claim that it was not profiting from Holocaust denial. "They may not take money from people denying the Holocaust, but the point is that museums and other organizations are paying to combat this stuff. They plainly are. We are. We're paying them up to $2 a click."
He declined to say how much the museum paid to Google but said search engine optimization (SEO) and AdWords were a key part–and cost–of its marketing strategy.
The director of the Breman Museum, Aaron Berger, said that according to the Southern Law Poverty Center, Atlanta was the fourth worst state in the U.S. for active hate groups and using AdWords was an "incredibly important part of our approach in getting our site up the search results."
A Google spokesman said last week: "We never want to make money from searches for Holocaust denial and we don't allow regular advertising on those terms."
The specific neo-Nazi site of concern to the Bremen Museum is called Stormfront, which comes up first when Google users search "did the Holocaust happen." But the tech giant has faced scrutiny for more generally not taking responsibility for directing users to hate sites.
Google has recently come under pressure to amend its search algorithm to stop Holocaust denial sites from appearing first when certain topics are searched. So far the company has refused to accept responsibility for sending users to Holocaust denial websites, critics charge, but the company did make changes to its algorithm to promote "more high quality, credible content on the web."
Despite Google's statements Barry Schwartz, an expert on search engines and their algorithms, does not believe that the changes to Google's algorithm have amounted to much of a difference. In a blog post on Wednesday, Schwartz questioned the effect of Google's altered algorithm.
"I wonder if Google made any real change here or if it was limited to a really small set of queries related to these types of queries and sites?" he wrote.
Schendowich told the Guardian that the only way his organization can combat the appearance of Holocaust denial websites at the top of search results is to pay for ads to promote his museum's site. Attempts to use SEO techniques have so far failed to organically overtake the listing of anti-Semitic sites.
"It's a very hot topic and what bothers me is that a denier site is right at the top. It's nauseating. Absolutely nauseating," Schendowich said. "I talk to so many people who survived it … it did happen. We have all the evidence. That's what we're doing. That's why it's so important."