Google announced its first attempt to combat the circulation of “fake news” on its search engine with new tools allowing users to report misleading or offensive content, and a pledge to improve results generated by its algorithm.
The technology company said it would allow people to complain about misleading, inaccurate or hateful content in its autocomplete function, which pops up to suggest searches based on the first few characters typed.
It also said it would refine its search engine to “surface more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content” – and acknowledged for the first time that it had taken the measures to combat the threat of fake news.
Ben Gomes, vice-president of engineering, Google Search, said in a blogpost: “In a world where tens of thousands of pages are coming online every minute of every day, there are new ways that people try to game the system,. The most high-profile of these issues is the phenomenon of ‘fake news’, where content on the web has contributed to the spread of blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive, or downright false information.”
The executive added that the user feedback mechanisms were designed to “include clearly labelled categories so you can inform us directly if you find sensitive or unhelpful content”. Results would allow Google to change the way pages were ranked in search results.
Regarding the changes to its search algorithm, Gomes added: “We’ve adjusted our signals to help surface more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content ... so that issues similar to the Holocaust denial results that we saw back in December are less likely to appear.” The news of the prominence of Holocaust denial in Google searches was first revealed by the Observer.
Google also promised to open up over how it would make such decisions in the future, although there remained criticism over its lack of transparency.
“As is often the case when Google announces changes, this couldn’t be more vague,” suggested Joost de Valk, a search engine expert at the consultancy firm Yoast.
The changes come following months of pressure on Google over low-quality and offensive results in its search products, including autocomplete suggestions which promote the idea that climate change is a hoax.
The company’s main search product has been accused similarly of spreading extremism: in late 2016 a search for “did the Holocaust happen” gave, as its first result, a link to Holocaust denial on the racist website Stormfront.
Google will also allow users to make complaints about its “featured snippets” – Google’s name for the boxed-out answers that appear at the top of searches for common queries – which have been said to have spread fake news, such as a claim that Barack Obama was planning a coup in 2016.
Danny Sullivan, editor of the industry news site Search Engine Land, said that the changes were almost certainly driven by Google’s desire to end the rash of bad press it had received over its role in spreading such misleading and false information.
“The response is definitely happening because of all the attention that’s come up in recent months over fake news and problematic search results, answers and search suggestions,” Sullivan told the Guardian. “Some of the changes are already visible in terms of better results. It’s a long way from perfect, nor do I expect the results will ever be perfect for every search. That’s impossible. But I do hope we see continued improvement in the weeks and months to come.”
