Google, which ranks articles by relevance — and can make or break digital media companies — is now fact-checking stories on Google News by adding links to unbiased, explanatory stories in search results.
Google’s new “Fact check” tag — which joins other categories the search giant uses to distinguish certain posts within the endless sea of internet content such as “Highly Cited” and “Opinion” — aims “to help readers find fact checking in large news stories,” according to a blog post.
In the post, Google Head of News Richard Gingras explained some of the logic in determining which stories get the “Fact check” tag.
“Google News determines whether an article might contain fact checks in part by looking for the schema.org ClaimReview markup,” he wrote. “We also look for sites that follow the commonly accepted criteria for fact checks.”
Google already uses algorithms to give certain sources preference in its search rankings, which drives a significant percentage of total internet traffic. However, the company hasn’t previously called out false news stories in any way or appeared to make overt political judgments, although Donald Trump has accused the search engine of “suppressing” bad news about Hillary Clinton.
Earlier this year, former Facebook employees admitted that human curators deliberately prevented news from right-wing sources from trending in its News Feed
“We’re excited to see the growth of the Fact Check community and to shine a light on its efforts to divine fact from fiction, wisdom from spin,” Gingras wrote.