Helping Europeans find facts in moments that matter
Whether in a time of crisis, or when you’re searching for sensitive information like health or financial advice, we all have moments when a search for information comes with higher stakes. In the moments when accessing quality information is critically important, people should be empowered with the tools they need to spot misinformation and find sources they can trust. Ahead of International Fact-Checking Day, we're rolling out new experiences on Google Search to help people across Europe make sense of online information in those moments that matter.
Get more context about your searches
In the coming days, you’ll be able to click on the three dots next to a result to learn more about it and dig deeper into more information about a particular page. About this result will soon be available in all languages and countries where Search is available.
Additionally, for English language searches, you’ll now be able to learn more background information about the author or a page. These features will help you evaluate whether you want to click on the website and learn more. Read more in this post.
An example of how the About this result feature works.
Content advisories appearing in Search
Sometimes, there’s just not a lot of great information to show for a search, or the results are changing quickly – and it’s important to have that context. To address these information gaps, Search will automatically show content advisories in situations when a topic is rapidly evolving, or when our systems don’t have high confidence in the overall quality of the results available for the search. We’re expanding the advisories for quality information gaps to new languages, including German, French, Italian and Spanish in the coming months.
Fact checking with European news organizations
Across Europe, we’re partnering with organizations to deliver fact check training and to share new techniques for combating the spread of misinformation online.
In Germany, we’ve expanded our long-running fact check partnership Faktencheck23 with the German Press Agency. Since 2021, over 1,300 journalists from more than 100 German newsrooms have taken part in the training and joined a vibrant fact-checking community. Today, we’re launching the Fact Check Challenge for German-speaking journalists. Journalists can test their knowledge in quizzes about digital research, verification and fact-checking techniques. The winning participants will attend the inaugural Faktencheck23 Summit this autumn in Berlin. More details can be found here.
Additionally, Google provided a €25M contribution towards the inaugural European Media Information Fund. So far, 40 projects across Europe have been funded. Initiatives range from increasing the media literacy of a community in Italy by enabling local librarians with new resources and tools to boosting fact checking activities during Czech elections.
Access to authoritative content and news is especially critical during times of crisis and war. We partnered with the Lviv Media Forum and the Thomson Foundation earlier this year to provide a four-part training program for Ukrainian news organizations on engaging diaspora audiences and combating misinformation, among other topics. The findings were published in a handbook and distributed for free across the Ukrainian news industry network.
Making sure we surface quality information and help users get more context on what they find online is part of our mission to make the world’s information universally accessible. We’re grateful for our fact-checking partners across Europe and will continue our work to make every user feel safer when looking for information online.
