SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) — Donald Trump on Friday accused Google of showing only “bad stories” about him and vowed to have the tech giant prosecuted if he gets back in the White House.

Trump provided no backing for his accusation in a post on his Truth Social platform, in which he added that the search engine displays only positive articles about his Democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris.

“This is an illegal activity, and hopefully the Justice Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant Interference of Elections,” he said in the post.

“If not, and subject to the laws of our country, I will request their prosecution, at the maximum levels, when I win the election.”

The Trump post came after a conservative group reported on what it said it found when doing a search on “Donald Trump presidential race 2024”.

“Both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of Search for relevant and common search queries,” Google said in response to an AFP inquiry.

“This report looked at a single rare search term on a single day a few weeks ago, and even for that search, both candidates’ websites ranked in the top results on Google.”

Google has been adamant that it does not manipulate search results to favour any political candidate.

The company does not disclose the inner workings of the software that powers its ubiquitous search engine.

However, factors known to influence search results for news stories include the timeliness and popularity of topics.

Trump is at the centre of numerous criminal and civil cases in which he faces accusations including sexual abuse, paying hush money to a porn star, interfering with the 2020 election and trying to thwart the peaceful transition of power after President Joe Biden defeated him.