Google's search was created to help users find useful information, highlighting the quality content created by publishers. Access to reliable and useful information is what drives the world to the Internet to inform it and publishers to their investment in it.
However, with thousands of new articles published online every minute, daily, the amount of content users are confronted with is enormous.
Unfortunately, it is not all true or really making the separation between truth and lie extremely difficult. For that reason, last October, along with Google's associates at Jigsaw, the company announced that it would gradually enable publishers in some countries to display an "Information Verification" tag in Google News News entries. This tag is placed in articles that include information that has been reviewed by publishers and agencies with whom we collaborate and are responsible for this work.
After reviewing user and publisher feedback, we've decided to expand this feature. Now the Google News Tag is labeled everywhere and has expanded to the Search service in all languages. For the first time, when performing a search, listings that have been reviewed by a partner will be discernible at the top of the results page. The information will be displayed, who created it and whether a valid source has confirmed its authenticity.
This information will not be applicable or available in each entry and there will be search result pages where different publishers have checked the same claim and have reached different conclusions.
Of course, the information verifications are not ours and are presented so that users have a more up-to-date judgment. We are not sure we will always agree with them, but we think it is helpful for users to understand the degree of consensus or disagreement about a claim and to get clear information about which sources agree with each other. By making information verifications more visible in search results, we believe that users will be more likely to check and evaluate it, forming their own in-depth opinions.
In order to include publishers in this service, they need to adopt the Schema.org ClaimReview label, which will use public web sites to record and verify public placements (more information can see here) or use the cross-referencing tool created by the Journal of Journalism at the University of Duke and by Jigsaw.
Also, only publishers who are determined to follow the algorithm for the reliability of the information will qualify for membership.
Finally, the content must comply with the general policy applied to data markup, as well as the Google News Criteria and the standards of accountability and transparency, reading or distortion of information as published by Google in Google News General Guidelines section.
In the event that an issuer or a claim for the accuracy of an item of information does not have this specification or does not respect this policy, we may, in our opinion, ignore the labeling of this site.
This achievement would not be feasible without the help of other organizations and the Intelligence Identification Community, which now includes more 115 organizations. If you would like to know more about this new Google Search service, please visit it Consumer Help Center.
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