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May 15, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Another study has once again confirmed what Google’s conservative critics have long alleged: that the world’s leading search engine tilts its news results heavily in favor of left-wing sources.

A new study by researchers at Northwestern University “presents an algorithm audit of the Google Top Stories box,” examining the results’ variety and ideological leanings, the Daily Mail reports. The researchers looked at the 6,302 articles that appeared in Google’s Top Stories box in November 2017, and found that CNN had the largest percentage of articles at 10%, followed by the New York Times at 6.5% and the Washington Post at 5.6%. From there, Fox News was fourth at just 3%.

The rest of the top twenty sources were all left-leaning organizations or publications, such as Politico, NPR, ABC News, NBC News, and the Huffington Post. No openly conservative news publisher, such as the Daily Caller, made the list.

“Results showed that Google Top Stories box impressions tend to have a more left-leaning than right-leaning inclination,” the study said. “This can also vary by search term, with 161 terms having an overall left-leaning score and 22 having a right-learning score. It is important to note that a baseline of news content on the internet provided by GDELT [a news aggregation system] showed that a left-leaning slant is the general tendency.”

The study found that 86% of results for the month came from a mere 20 websites, 62% of which were deemed “left-leaning.” Other analyses previously found those numbers to be even higher.

Last August, PJ Media’s Paula Bolyard conducted an experiment in which she performed a News search for “trump,” then categorized the results as “Left” or “Right” based on a media bias chart from journalist Sharyl Attkisson. Bolyard found that out of the first 100 results, CNN alone accounted for 21, the Washington Post for 11, and only five results came from right-leaning sources (Fox News and the Wall Street Journal).

The findings are only the latest revelations to undermine Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s repeated insistence that the company’s ubiquitous services are ideologically neutral. In April, documents revealed that Google manually manipulates search results and even maintains a blcaklist of conservative sites including The American Spectator and Conservative Tribune.

Numerous other leaked private conversations and documents appear to show that the staff’s dominant ideology is dramatically out of step with the country at large and that Google is willing to enforce those ideologies through its ostensibly neutral services and platforms.