A defective search is unlikely, as it is simply a widget of Google search you put into the website. It can happen, though. So you could be correct.
What is more common is someone tells the webmaster to have the search to disregard certain search results for whatever reason. Amazon does this all the time with products or (more often) books it doesn’t want to promote or desires you to go to a preferred product).
As someone who runs a company with a legal department, I don’t see a conspiracy. I see a legal department or manager saying “this is trouble we don’t need and telling the webmaster to suppress the search results.