How we highlight fact checks in Search and Google News
Google has highlighted fact checks in Search and News for almost three years as a way to help people make more informed judgments about the content they encounter online. Fact checks from authoritative sources are highlighted on Google Search and are labeled in Google News.
This is possible because fact-checking initiatives around the world mark up their work with ClaimReview, which allows fact-checkers to signal—and anyone online to automatically detect—that a webpage contains a fact check.
A highlighted fact check as it appears in a Search result
Today we’re sharing that these fact checks appear more than 11 million times a day in Search results globally and in Google News in five countries (Brazil, France, India, U.K. and U.S.). That adds up to roughly 4 billion impressions a year. This library of over 40,000 fact checks is publicly available for anyone to consult through a dedicated search tool and for researchers to access through an open API.
We’re also working with the Duke Reporters’ Lab and the International Fact-Checking Network around the adoption of structured data fields for fact checks about multimedia. (Disclosure: I was the founding director of the International Fact-Checking Network.)
The information generated by these efforts might provide valuable context for people as they use Google products—for instance, we could surface the origin of a miscaptioned image or background on the creator of a manipulated video. In 2020, we’ll continue our work to provide users with useful context about the content they access online and offline.
Beyond highlighting fact checks on our surfaces, Google has for years supported fact-checking projects around the world. In 2020, we’ll explore new models to support the long-term sustainability of the fact-checking field. Fact-checking matters, to Google and everyone who uses our products. We’ll continue to find ways to surface and support quality journalism on our products and beyond.
