Fake News: Google Announces Changes To Search Results

Fake news has been a trending term among tech companies in recent months, and Google is taking a more proactive approach toward the issue.

In a post Tuesday, Google announced several major changes to how it categorizes search results to stop inadvertently promoting sites with intentionally misleading or false articles. Google said the search company plans to implement algorithmic changes to the way it sorts individual pages to elevate high-authority pages and demote low-quality or factually incorrect content.

Read: Google Changes Search To Detect, Flag Incorrect Content, Fake News

This major internal change follows Google’s earlier adjustments to its human quality rater evaluation process. Google has previously used live staffers who manually evaluated the quality of search results — while these results didn’t directly change individual search results, Google used the data to calibrate its page ratings. Now, quality raters can use more detailed tags intended to target pages that intentionally produce misleading information.

Users can also provide direct feedback and flag problematic results from Google’s AutoComplete and Featured Snippets field, which displays answers to search questions in a dedicated field above search results.

Read: Google Fact Check Helps Identify Fake News, Now Available In Search

While Google’s internal search adjustments are more substantial for the search company, the re-evaluation of its Featured Snippets and AutoComplete fields will be the more front-facing update for most Google users. Notably, the Featured Snippets feature produced several public embarrassments for Google. Search results for questions like “are women evil” or “did the Holocaust happen” prominently displayed information from unverified sources in the Featured Snippets field.