Google’s crackdown on fake news has helped it to hit a new milestone of serving up 11m fact-checked articles every single day.
Nearly three years ago, Google started a new initiative to deliver relevant and trustworthy content to users.
The high-quality content drive involved the introduction of a fact-checked label for news, articles and blogs that passed Google’s purity test.
The search giant has been using a ClaimReview schema markup since early 2017 to do the initial work.
It then uses fact-checkers to make sure that any claims made in content are actually true.
Google has been working hard to limit the spread of misinformation during the last 12 months, and the latest milestone suggests that its initiatives are helping to improve the quality of content in SERPs.
Fact-checks are now made 11m times every day, which includes global results and Google News.
This means that around 4bn impressions a year now involve quality content rather than clickbait, low-quality alternatives.
Users can see when a webpage has been fact-checked by looking out for the label at the bottom of snippets in search results.
Google is now planning to increase the scope of fact-checks in 2020 and has partnered with the International Fact-Checking Network and Duke Reporters’ Lab to improve the system.
It will also look at new models to support the fact-checking field in the long term.
Google noted: “In 2020, we’ll continue our work to provide users with useful context about the content they access online and offline.”
