Google is upgrading the algorithms that run its search engine to prevent fake news, hoaxes and conspiracy theories from appearing on top of search results. In a blog post on Tuesday, the tech giant said structural changes were needed to ensure that fake news did not turn up in search results.
It outlined steps to curb the spread of misinformation online. For example, Google will train its evaluators – people who vet Google’s search results – to better spot “low-quality” sites and make it easier for users to flag inaccurate results.
Ben Gomes, vice president of engineering at Google, said 0.25% of daily search queries return “offensive or clearly misleading” content. “Today...there are new ways that people try to game the system. The most high-profile of these issues is the phenomenon of fake news, where content on the web has contributed to the spread of blatantly misleading, low-quality, offensive or downright false information. To have long-term and impactful changes, more structural changes in search are needed,” the post read.
Earlier this month, Google rolled out a “Fact Check” feature that enables spotting fake news on search results. Users will now see a fact check tag on a news story in search results, which will display information from Google’s fact-checking partners such as PolitiFact or Snopes. “The snippet will display information on the claim, who made the claim, and the fact check of that particular claim,” Google had said in an earlier blog post.
In March, rival Facebook, too, had launched a function to help flag fake news as “disputed”. The social media giant also uses PolitiFact and Snopes as fact checkers. Once the story is reported by a user, third-party checkers that Facebook has teamed up with will review it.
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