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.

But nowhere in that article do we see the words “Don’t Trust Mark Farrell,” as portrayed in the Google search result.

The same goes for the search results displaying for this SF Standard article, which Google would have you believe comes with the headline “Don’t Trust Mark Farrell.” It links to a July 1 article by the SF Standard’s Josh Koehn that is actually entitled “Mark Farrell lived large on campaign cash while mayor, supervisor.” That article too is full of some terrific reporting on Farrell's previous use of slush funds and legal loopholes. But the article certainly does not contain the words “Farrell caught spending thousands of dollars in campaign donations on luxury dining,” as the Google search display would indicate.

These ads do display the word “Sponsored,” and in some cases, also display the words “Paid for by Daniel Lurie for Mayor 2024.” But the ads misleadingly alter what we in the online news industry call “metadata,” that is, the headline and preview text snippet that displays on a given online platform.

Farrell’s campaign is running Google ads too, but they simply link to his own website, and are not really misleading. The Google ad transparency tool shows that Lurie, Farrell, and mayoral candidate Supervisor Aaron Peskin are all advertising on Google (we did not see Google ad campaigns for Mayor Breed or Supervisor Ahsha Safai). But Peskin and Farrell are both just running positive ads that link to their own campaign websites, not attack ads with misleading headlines.

In a statement to SFist, Lurie campaign consultant Tyler Law said, “Insider corruption has held San Francisco back from tackling our public safety, drug and housing crises’. Daniel is running for mayor to the completely upend City Hall’s broken system and that includes fearlessly calling out corruption in all its forms.”

The campign adds that the ads link to news that has already been widely circulated.

Lurie’s ads do not violate Google’s policies, and Google completely allows advertisers to alter displayed headlines on links. Google generally displays the word “Sponsored” next to the ad, but does not reveal that campaigns have reworded the headlines and preview text. And it is inconsistent in showing who paid for the ad.

And even presidential campaigns lately aren't above this shadiness.

Axios reported last week that Kamala Harris’s campaign is also altering news headlines on Google ads. And these ads may be more effective than most, as they display very similarly to normal search results. But casual web-surfers may not notice the tiny-text word “Sponsored,” and may come away believing that the Chronicle and SF Standard both ran articles declaring “Don’t Trust Mark Farrell.”

"Some of these news organizations might not want to be positioned as promoting one campaign, and this implies that they have a bias towards that campaign, potentially," John Gable, CEO of the media bias ratings firm AllSides, told Axios.

SFist has also reached out to the Farrell campaign for comment, and we will update this post with any response.

It sure stands out that Lurie is only going after Farrell with these ads, and not any of the other candidates in the mayoral race. And there had definitely been unusual animosity between these two wealthiest candidates in the race, as they often engage in public Twitter feuds with one another.

This certainly adds more interesting context to the story of the fake MarkFarrellForMayor.com website that some anonymous troll started for the purpose of trashing Farrell.

You can rip the Lurie campaign for doing this, but honestly, Google is really the party at fault for even allowing this. Heck, even Facebook put a halt to this practice on their platform way back in 2017, noting in a company blog post that “As part of our continuing efforts to stop the spread of misinformation and false news on Facebook.”

But with the Lurie campign massively outspending its opponents, they've bought the luxury of taking real news, and repackaging it as fake news, because Google simply allows political campaings to do so.

Note: This post has been updated with comment from the Daniel Lurie campaign.

Related: Someone Who Hates Mark Farrell Bought the ‘Mark Farrell for Mayor’ Website Just to Trash Him [SFist]

Images: (Left) Daniel Lurie for Mayor, (Right) @MarkFarrellSF