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Google "Fact Check" Tag In News and Search Goes Global

         

engine

2:38 pm on Apr 7, 2017 (gmt 0)

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Last October Google announced it'd be adding Fact Checking to Google news [webmasterworld.com]. of course, many questioned how this would work, and who checks the fact checkers. Well, that aside, google is now extending this globally, and in all languages. How to know if you're seeing it? Look out for the "Fact Check" tag or label in the SERPs and News.
After assessing feedback from both users and publishers, we’re making the Fact Check label in Google News available everywhere, and expanding it into Search globally in all languages. For the first time, when you conduct a search on Google that returns an authoritative result containing fact checks for one or more public claims, you will see that information clearly on the search results page. The snippet will display information on the claim, who made the claim, and the fact check of that particular claim. Google "Fact Check" Tag In News and Search Goes Global [blog.google]

seoskunk

4:32 am on Apr 8, 2017 (gmt 0)

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I think this is a great feature :

-1 = "Hard to categorize"
1 = "False"
2 = "Mostly false"
3 = "Half true"
4 = "Mostly true"
5 = "True"

Lotts of fun to be had as it appears to done by ratings

tangor

5:19 am on Apr 8, 2017 (gmt 0)

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Bing myself, but I'll take a look. From what I've read so far this superfluous feature appears localized to NEWS returns only, not the WEB in general. For the usually fake news to be graded by fake fact checkers rather seems like gilding the lily to me. :)

keyplyr

5:58 am on Apr 8, 2017 (gmt 0)

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Looking forward to seeing how this plays out. Too early for an opinion either way until I see if it affects anything, or is just ornamental to relieve the pressure being put on Google to come up with a solution to Fake News stories.

MrSavage

4:59 pm on Apr 8, 2017 (gmt 0)

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I have a better solution. Stop posing facts. This eliminates the need for a fact check or some way of verifying the information. Remove the information, provide searcher with links to website (with said sites own snippet) and the problem goes away. I'm not being sarcastic here. It's just the reality. Google is presenting "information" rather than a link to something. They are creating their own heat, their own issue. It's like this. I have a sore foot because I keep dropping this brick on it. Solution: I stop dropping the brick on my foot. I think sometimes intelligence becomes too much and one can't see the obvious that dummies seem to understand and notice.

azlinda

11:59 pm on Apr 8, 2017 (gmt 0)



I can see many problems. Depending upon which political side someone is on, they can choose an answer reflecting their political persuasion. Factual news to one person may be fake news to another.

keyplyr

12:09 am on Apr 9, 2017 (gmt 0)

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Remove the information... Google is presenting "information" rather than a link to something.
Doubtful Google will ever return to the days of *only* published search results. The longer users stay on their pages, the easier they can roll that into income.

tangor

12:17 am on Apr 9, 2017 (gmt 0)

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> Love of Money
< Don't Do Evil

keyplyr

12:39 am on Apr 9, 2017 (gmt 0)

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I have no problem with Google making money. Some of it comes to me :)

Don't know how it all balances out, but Google gives quite a lot back: free Google maps, free Google places for business, free Android OS & numerous apps, free Chrome browser, free traffic from search, and huge investments in tech innovations (driverless cars, satellites, medical, wifi, etc.) and a lot more.

Do they do evil? Something as big as Google probably affects some people that way.

seoskunk

2:24 am on Apr 9, 2017 (gmt 0)

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Google quietly dropped the "don't be evil" some time ago

tangor

2:54 am on Apr 9, 2017 (gmt 0)

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This is not a g bash, just an observation of how large corporations (or those who want to become one) operate.

Give it away free until market saturated then make it pay and pay and pay. Bell Tele, IBM, MS ... B and G and Y ... all have done exactly the same thing.

For me, when something which has real value is given away free I look down the road to when that "free" service, etc becomes billable and make plans in advance.

Again, this is NOT bashing g. Just an observation on how some forms of capitalism (and socialism) take advantage of ordinary human greed, laziness, or (sigh) stupidity. When given a choice between work for it or get it free....

Give it away until it becomes a necessity, then start billing for it (or controlling it, or censoring it, or politicizing it, etc)

g's reaction to "fake news" is in their best interest to AVOID governmental regulations, not because they believe the fake news harms people story line.

They want to have their cake and eat it, too for as long as possible.

iamlost

2:39 pm on Apr 9, 2017 (gmt 0)

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I have a whole other perspective on this 'fact check': it is training input.

As mentioned previously in thread 'fact' has become, for a broad swath of public and publisher alike, a personalisation factor.

The only two bones G has in the 'fact' game are (1) maximise revenue/profit (2) right up to the brink of regulator intervention.

This is a regular G behaviour, perhaps first widely noticed with how they handled pharma a decade or so ago. And seen frequently since.

That one can have ones cake (extra revenue) and eat it too (extra machine learning data) is very G.

EditorialGuy

2:44 pm on Apr 9, 2017 (gmt 0)

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Why make things complicated with guesswork about Google's motives? It seems to me that they're just doing what most well-run companies do: improving their product.

tangor

5:43 am on Apr 10, 2017 (gmt 0)

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In this case it is not about improving a product, it is about protecting a revenue stream from outside regulation.

Every Panda (or other algo change) is exactly that as well. Each change is about cleaning out the swamp of publishers for the ADVERTISERS with dollars to spend.

Search, as such, has not really advanced since the turn of the century, but selective listings to improve ad spend on a perceived market place for advertisers (not publishers) certainly has changed.

FranticFish

6:40 am on Apr 10, 2017 (gmt 0)

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1) Publishers indicate whether they've fact-checked their own material
Because they shouldn't have to do that as a matter of course, right?

2) "...there may be search result pages where different publishers checked the same claim and reached different conclusions"
You don't say!

3) Search for 'Bell Pottinger Pentagon Al Qaeda videos'.
These would have doubtless have been 'fact checked' material to this day were it not for the whistleblower involved.

jmccormac

8:58 am on Apr 10, 2017 (gmt 0)

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Google is just trying to distract the attention of the regulators and the more gullible fools in the media from the fact that apart from the operators of fake news websites, the biggest single beneficiary is Google as it is the primary monetisation method. Its shills make the usual ooh and aah sounds about the intelligence of Googlers but the reality is that this is purely a financial decision forced on Google because regulation was the next step and that would have hit Google's bottom line.

Regards...jmcc

engine

11:44 am on Apr 10, 2017 (gmt 0)

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It is about protecting the product, as much as the monetary aspect, imho. If people realise the information they are seeing is fake and ultimately, has no credibility, resulting in a decline of authority, those people, eventually, will not believe their sources. Bang goes the credibility.

What would you have any aggregator do? They have to do something.

One of the biggest problems with this is when people blindly repeat incorrect news, and that's because they've not read the story. There was an example a week or two ago where people were parroting an incorrect story, and the correct news seemed less exciting, so got less attention. I watched the news travel like a wildfire. Not just in social media, but also in some mainstream press, which should have known better, imho.

I do hope the regulators get to grips with this, although it'll be in the long term.

azlinda

1:12 pm on Apr 10, 2017 (gmt 0)



Research those who are doing the fact checking. It's just another case of the foxes guarding the hen house. Pfffffft.

MrSavage

3:25 pm on Apr 10, 2017 (gmt 0)

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Does anyone think this issue has anything with Google being so darn good and having that 99%+ of mobile search and pretty much all of the overall internet traffic? If they get it wrong, doesn't that sway....global opinion? A powerful yet crippling predicament. This magnifies everything. If the only source gets it wrong, we are just now seeing those consequences. Of course not Google's fault that they are so amazing and there is only an idiotic Bing as a competitor. Of course instead of fact checking being a solution, they could always decide that they won't post information, but rather they will send people who make a living at news, like say, newspapers, etc.

EditorialGuy

8:41 pm on Apr 10, 2017 (gmt 0)

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It is about protecting the product, as much as the monetary aspect, imho. If people realise the information they are seeing is fake and ultimately, has no credibility, resulting in a decline of authority, those people, eventually, will not believe their sources. Bang goes the credibility.

Exactly. Why would the world's largest search engine want to let its news results be manipulated and exploited by fake-news sites (or Russian intelligence, for that matter?).

tangor

9:55 pm on Apr 10, 2017 (gmt 0)

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It might be about factual serps, but I think it is about protecting revenue streams .... after all, the fact checking did not become a SERIOUS issue for g until a very large chunk of very large spending advertisers pulled their business.

The other stuff is political noise, and g is very involved with that as well. There's no doubt of that with all the ex-g employees in gov these days.

All has been coming to a head for a few years, but the VISIBLE result on the serps didn't appear until the advertisers walked out. Some might say cause and effect. Some might say "fake news", I merely see it as a fact.

jmccormac

8:14 am on Apr 11, 2017 (gmt 0)

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It would be far simpler for any such bad actor to purchase advertising space on Google's SERPs. Had fake news sites being doing this instead of being effectively one-way Adsense operations, then it would not have been the problem it became during the US Presidential election. The other, and as yet largely unaddressed, problem is that Google's algorithm (much vaunted by its fans) was so absolutely useless that it amplified the fake news problem. Some fake news sites that I've seen in surveys of tens of millions of websites have common characteristics that allow them to be identified as such and they are a lot easier to categorise than Chinese gambling affiliate landers. Then again, seeing as how Google wandered off down the Yellow Brick road of abject idiocy with Panda and the rest of the Animal Farm kludges, it is no suprise to see its algorithm, its kludgers and its fans in the media being utterly clueless about the problem and how to solve it. Indeed Panda and the Animal Farm kludges actually facilitated the growth of the fake news problem. This fact check rating system is an admission of failure and will only make things worse.

Regards...jmcc

smilie

9:50 pm on Apr 12, 2017 (gmt 0)



>> MrSavage: I have a better solution. Stop posing facts.

They already did. A long time ago. And now return to the original programming (of your brain)..

So who's ranking news, Goog (originally I spelled Gog, what a slipup)? Are they now the world's authorities on the truth? Or are there Alphabet agencies behind that do that, and how is that not related to propaganda.

How about G leaves news to the news outlets. Be it large and alphabet-agency-approved, or small and non-approved ones. G has 0 weight on the quality of the news, and the people behind their curtain even less so. By the way, that's a primary reason alternative channels such as Russia Today are so popular, as there's really no analytics and real research in large american news outlets anymore. And when you have no analytics and just talking heads mumbling (interrupted by even more fakeness, advertisements), you know where it is going as far as truthiness.... approaching 0. No amount of "tagging as truth" is going to help here.

The once full control and domination is falling apart as we speak. And they are really clueless to see why, however obvious. It's pretty fun to watch.

For example. Does anyone believe that a president of a country should be ridiculed by every single "news" outlet on every channel every day? Or there's a point and time when it becomes a matter of treason and an attempt to overthrow legitimate government, and severely prosecuted? Now rate that for "fakeness".

keyplyr

11:02 pm on Apr 12, 2017 (gmt 0)

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How about G leaves news to the news outlets.
They do... they just post the snippets and links to the news outlets, the same as the SERP but presented in a carousel.

MrSavage

6:35 am on Apr 13, 2017 (gmt 0)

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News outlets? It's quickly becoming like the music industry, except for the fact news has far greater consequences. News requires return on investment. The online sources of revenues for credible news outlets is crumbs. Layoffs and shutting down newspapers. That's the trend. Relying on a website for income is not sustainable for one reason. Perhaps that 80/20 or worse profit share on ad revenue. I'm quite certain that after the fact people will understand the bigger issue at hand. News outlets? LOL. That spinning carousel is becoming less trustworthy with each and every layoff and publication shutdown. No money, no sources or at least credible ones. This is far more serious than most people seem to realize. After the fact. That's what this will be.

tangor

6:57 am on Apr 13, 2017 (gmt 0)

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Shivers! I truly do love horror and ghost stories! Doom and gloom and end of the world. Sigh, been there, done that---ages ago. Fortunately, g's "fact check" snippets tells me the world is okay and will go on and on and on and on and....

What hasn't changed is the inertia in entrenched conceptions of how the web (world) works. There's nothing new here, more of the same CYA until the next misadventure of politics or social outrage comes along. IOW, business as usual.

Meanwhile, provide good, hopefully unique!, content and the web might meander down a path to your landing page(s).

MrSavage

3:05 pm on Apr 13, 2017 (gmt 0)

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The interesting thing about words is that in the wrong hands, they can mean nothing. From brain to fingertips isn't everyone's strong suit. Unable to convey thoughts to words makes contributing in a forum a difficult dilemma.

tangor

5:23 am on Apr 14, 2017 (gmt 0)

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Even in the right hands the negative result is possible. Hence the fact check flags in g and the fake news pop up in fb. Guess it depends on whose brain and fingers are being checked by other fingers and brains as to whether a contribution has happened. Meanwhile users will both suffer and vote with their feet as the case may be.

smilie

2:12 pm on Apr 17, 2017 (gmt 0)



>> @MrSavage: News outlets? It's quickly becoming like the music industry, except for the fact news has far greater consequences. News requires return on investment

Allow me, who used to run a niche news site to comment on this one.

If you start publishing real news, research, share it with prominent bloggers, for instance and publish expert blog posts as part of news. Instead of how it is now, news-like or news-looking articles that serve corporate masters and special agendas. Or that only designed to hit specific keywords without a clue on the subject. And maybe instead of 3-second brainwash and quicktalk that a typical news blahbber does maybe we start hearing people actually DISCUSS things, instead of who yells quicker and louder. You then become sort of news AGGREGATOR, because you can't really compete with thousands of bloggers who may be experts in their niches. Then you get back your viewers. And then you won't have to resort to buying chinese bot traffic to look good in Alexa.

<snip>

Internet has been around for 20+ years, people who read it aren't that clueless anymore and can figure out their own news ratings.

[edited by: goodroi at 2:07 am (utc) on Apr 18, 2017]
[edit reason] Let's be careful to stay on topic and focused on SEO [/edit]

EditorialGuy

3:14 pm on Apr 17, 2017 (gmt 0)

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Internet has been around for 20+ years, people who read it aren't that clueless anymore and can figure out their own news ratings.

Actually, a lot of people can't (which is why so many fake news stories get shared on Facebook as being real, for example).

And while the Internet may have been around for 20+ years, that doesn't mean all Internet users have been around or analyzing the reliability of news sources for more than two decades.
 


 


 


 

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