Study finds the search giant has profited since Roe was overturned from anti-abortion groups buying misleading search terms

Google has made millions of dollars in the last two years from advertisements misdirecting users who were seeking abortion services to “pregnancy crisis centers” that do not actually provide care, according to a new study.

The tech giant has taken in an estimated $10m in two years from anti-choice organizations that pay to advertise such centers alongside legitimate results on the Google search page, according to a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a non-profit group that conducts misinformation research. Its study, published on Thursday, estimates that the search results have reached and potentially misled hundreds of thousands of users.

Using the analytics tool Semrush, the CCDH estimated how much revenue Google has brought in from such advertisers between 1 March 2021 and 28 February 2023. It said Google’s lack of enforcement against these groups has enabled a multimillion-dollar “cottage industry” of anti-abortion marketing firms, which provide prepackaged promotional materials and websites to crisis pregnancy centers.

“This is fundamentally about Google permitting extremely deceptive behavior and doing very little to actually ensure that people are informed,” said Imran Ahmed, co-founder and CEO of the CCDH. “Its failure to plug the holes in their own rules has created a layer of exploitive marketing companies that provide services to further undermine sexual reproductive rights in America.”

Google and the rise of crisis pregnancy centers

Crisis pregnancy centers have been defined by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists as facilities that “operate unethically”, representing themselves as legitimate reproductive healthcare clinics while actually seeking to dissuade people from accessing abortion healthcare. They outnumber actual abortion clinics three to one in the US, with approximately 2,600 operating nationwide.

Reproductive rights organizations have raised the alarm about the growing power of crisis pregnancy centers in the US as access to legitimate care plummets following the reversal of federal protections of abortion rights.

“At the heart of these fake health centers – which are often misleadingly called crisis pregnancy centers – is nothing more than lies and misinformation,” said Ally Boguhn, a spokesperson for the reproductive rights organization Naral Pro-Choice America. “They are notorious for using deceptive mass messaging and coercive tactics to manipulate people to try to block them from accessing abortion care.”

Google Search is a leading source of information on abortion, with Americans making an estimated 102m searches for queries related to abortion each year. Google Search is now the top source of referrals to crisis pregnancy clinics, the study found by reviewing client intake data from a top anti-abortion marketing firm, surpassing word of mouth for means of getting pregnant people in the door.

The CCDH study showed such clinics pay for advertisements to appear in Google Search results related to more than 15,000 different queries about abortion, including “abortion clinic near me”, “abortion pill”, “abortion clinic” and “planned parenthood”. Further, 71% of clinics identified in the study used deceptive means of advertising, advancing false claims that abortions are linked to cancer and other diseases.

The allegations follow a separate study from the CCDH in June 2022, which found one in 10 Google searches for abortion services in US “trigger states” – where abortion was targeted immediately after the reversal of Roe v Wade – led to crisis pregnancy clinics.

Google policy requires any organization that wants to advertise to people seeking information about abortion services “to be certified and clearly disclose whether they do or do not offer abortions”, said Michael Aciman, a spokesperson for the company.

Aciman said that Google reviewed the 2022 CCDH report and took action against violating advertisements but found that advertisers named were not violating company policies. He added that, under Google’s policy, advertisers paying to appear under search queries directly related to getting an abortion (for instance, “abortions near me”) must disclose whether they provide abortion services, while those appearing under more general search terms (such as “planned parenthood”) don’t need to.

Despite the requirement that advertisers disclose whether they actually provide abortions, researchers say such text can easily be overlooked – especially if the website itself does not make its intentions clear. The CCDH study found that 38% of crisis pregnancy center websites studied failed to carry any kind of disclaimer on their homepages clarifying that they do not offer abortions.

‘Unproven and potentially unsafe’ treatment advertised on Google

After the 2022 study from the CCDH, Google pledged to ban all advertisements of “abortion pill reversal” – a controversial treatment that claims to reverse the effects of medication abortion that has been condemned by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists as “dangerous” and “not based on science”.

However, the research found 40% of crisis pregnancy centers advertising on Google also promoted the “abortion pill reversal”. The study estimated that Google had taken in $2.6m in search advertising revenue from websites promoting the unproven treatment.

Aciman said Google does not allow ads promoting abortion reversal treatments and prohibits advertisers from misleading people about the services they offer, stating that Google has “taken enforcement action on content that violates our policies related to abortion reversal”. Google did not respond to a request for comment regarding how many advertisers were affected by those actions.

Abortion misinformation ‘cottage industry’ thrives on Google search

Loopholes utilized by anti-abortion advocates on Google, as well as the tech giant’s failure to enforce some of its existing policies, has made the company “the lynchpin of a multi-million dollar fake clinic industry that works around the clock to mislead and misdirect Americans who are seeking access to abortion care”, the study said.

Companies named in the report claimed to have launched hundreds of crisis pregnancy clinic websites in recent years. One marketing agency mentioned in the study offers website templates with misleading narratives and branding, arranging for centers to obtain web addresses with misleading healthcare-related terms like “.clinic” and “.hospital”. For a cost of up to $600 a month, the firm will also create custom Google ad campaigns, the study found. Another firm outlines for crisis pregnancy center clients a deliberate strategy of targeting people who are already “abortion-minded” or “abortion-determined” and seeking to dissuade them.

This industry has only grown after the supreme court’s overturning of the constitutional right to abortion with the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision last year. The previous CCDH study on abortion misinformation was published in 2022 – shortly before the right was overturned. In the months since, researchers at the CCDH say the online landscape has become more harrowing for people seeking abortion care.

“These new findings reflect the digital environment that now exists in a post-Dobbs America, where search engines are lifelines for those seeking care and information about their options – which are increasingly scarce,” the report said.