Google To Fact-Check, Flag 'Fake News' In Search Results

To help combat the spread of fake news, Google will henceforth highlight “authoritative sources” in search results, with a summary of whether the claims of the stories have been fact-checked or not. Google says sites will be judged authoritative by an algorithm and the company will not be fact-checking news stories itself.

A search on Google about a subject could return an authoritative answer containing fact-checked information for one or more public claims, Justin Kosslyn, product manager at Jigsaw and Cong Yu, research scientist at Google, explain in a co-authored post on the company's blog.


“These fact checks are not Google’s and are presented so people can make more informed judgments. Even though differing conclusions may be presented, we think it’s still helpful for people to understand the degree of consensus around a particular claim and have clear information on which sources agree,” the blog post read.

In the last few months, Google and Facebook have both been under fire for their role in the growth and distribution of fake news online.

This fact check was introduced on Google’s News search site in October but has now been added to its regular search results. After a news story has been fact-checked, true or false will appear beside it. However, the feature will not affect the order of search results and will not label sites known to spread false information as untrustworthy.