Google returns special presidential candidates box that previously omitted Donald Trump

Until a few of hours ago, a search for “presidential candidates” in Google did not return Republican candidate Donald Trump in a special box with other candidates. Google’s now fixed the issue, saying it was a technical bug. Despite the fix, another problem: Google continues to list Bernie Sanders as having an “active” campaign.

Here’s how Google’s special box listing presidential candidates with “Active Campaigns” appeared at 8:15 am ET this morning:

It showed the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, and Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. It also showed Bernie Sanders as having an active campaign, even though he dropped out earlier this month. It omitted Republican candidate Donald Trump and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

Soon after the screenshot above was taken, Google removed the box. It returned by 12:15 pm ET today with Trump and Johnson added.

At 2:05pm ET, a few hours after we originally asked, Google finally provided Search Engine Land with a statement on the issue:

We found a technical bug in Search where only the presidential candidates participating in an active primary election were appearing in a Knowledge Graph result. Because the Republican and Libertarian primaries have ended, those candidates did not appear. This bug was resolved early this morning.

Whatever the bug was, it’s still continuing to show Sanders as having an active campaign. This might going back to Google’s statement — that the box was apparently designed to show only nominees for US president, and technically both Clinton and Sanders (along with Stein) are nominees.

NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect that the box has been corrected and to incorporate Google’s statement.