This paper presents results from a sub-project established under the banner of the ADM+S Australian Search Experience ‘citizen science’ research project.

The aim was to understand what sort of news is presented to Australians through Google News. The project investigated 20 keywords related to Australian politics and global issues, including names of politicians, political parties, global sporting events and various COVID-related terms. These keywords were organised into two keyword sets: ‘Australian Politics’ and ‘Global Issues’.

The researchers found that Google News search results were not personalised with respect to demographics or geography. However, an isolated subset of domains frequently occupied the first page of the results, and results were not always localised to Australia. These findings help to better understand how search engines present news content to ordinary internet users.