Google is upping the ante in its battle against fake news and false information on the web by introducing fact checks from third parties in its search and news results.
That information, supplied by the likes of PolitiFact and Snopes, will show up in cards with a ‘Fact Check’ tag when you use the company’s search engine or look up news. As the company noted in a blog post, “the snippet will display information on the claim, who made the claim, and the fact check of that particular claim.”
Google first added fact checks to search back in October 2016 for the US and UK and rolled it out to a few more countries in February. Today’s announcement sees the feature launching across the world.
As before, the information isn’t verified directly by Google; instead, it allows anyone to get in on the action by using prescribed markup on their fact check pages. “Only publishers that are algorithmically determined to be an authoritative source of information will qualify for inclusion,” the company said.
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With that, Google joins Facebook in helping web users discern between bogus stories and truthful content. The company said it’s currently working with 115 fact-checking organizations to source verification data. Hopefully, we’ll see more initiatives like this to help prevent false information from spreading widely across the web.
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