US President Donald Trump says Google’s search engine is hiding “fair media” coverage of him and says he would address the situation, taking a swipe at the internet giant without providing evidence or giving details of any action he might take.

The company, part of Alphabet Inc, denied any political bias in its search engine.

Mr Trump’s economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, later told reporters that the White House was “taking a look” at Google, saying they would do “some investigation and some analysis” without providing further details.

Mr Trump’s criticism and threat of action to somehow restrict Google was his latest attack on a major tech company, following a series of tweets about Amazon.com, which he has accused of hurting small businesses and benefiting from a favourable deal with the US Postal Service.

Last week, without mentioning specific companies, he accused social media companies of silencing “millions of people” in an act of censorship, without offering evidence to support the claim.

In several tweets on Tuesday, the president said Google search results for “Trump News” showed only the reporting of what he terms fake news media, saying this was rigged against him and others.

Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018

Blaming Google for what he said was dangerous action that promoted mainstream media outlets such as CNN and suppressed conservative political voices, Mr Trump added, “This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!” He did not offer any details.

Google said in a statement that its search engine “is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology … We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment.”

US member of congress Ted Lieu, a Democrat, said in a tweet directed at Mr Trump: “If government tried to dictate the free speech algorithms of private companies, courts would strike it down in a nanosecond.”

….results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018

While the exact science behind Google searches on the internet is kept secret, its basic principles are widely known. Search results on Google are generated by a variety of factors measured by the company’s algorithms.

They include determining a site’s relevance by counting the number of links to the page.

Other factors such as personal browsing history and how certain keywords appear on the page also affect how pages are ranked. Popular news sites such as CNN.com and NYTimes.com, which many readers link to, can appear higher in searches based on such factors.

Mr Trump has long criticised news media coverage of him, frequently using the term fake news to describe critical reports.

Earlier this month, he accused social media companies, which include Twitter and Facebook, of censorship.

Mr Trump’s accusation of bias on the part of Google comes as social media companies have suspended accounts, banned certain users and removed content as they face pressure from the US Congress to police foreign propaganda and fake accounts aimed at disrupting American politics, including operations tied to Iran and Russia.

Companies such as Facebook and Twitter have also been pressed to remove conspiracy driven content and hate speech.

-AAP