Google is adding ‘fact-check’ tool or tag for factually verified stories that will make false stories harder to rise up in Google News. With this latest update, now publishers have to ensure that their news or stories follow the specified criteria of fact-check stories before adding the tag. Google has introduced this fact-check tool to accurately categorize news stories on the Google news service. This new fact-check tag service will differentiate verified stories from others to make this service more reliable. This service already has many different labels for the articles which are categorized into Opinion, Wikipedia, In-Depth Opinion and Highly-cited, among others. The search giant explains in its blogs that this latest fact-check label or tag will allow users or readers to find facts and figures in the large news stories. The articles will be tagged with a new label and will be displayed in the expanded story box on news.google.com. and also in the Google News and Weather apps. This new label will first come in US and UK. According to Google, the main reason behind the launch of the new tag is the growing focus and emphasis on the fact checking in the news. Duke University Reporter Lab reported that the fact-checks are now conducted over more than 100 active sites among politics, health, urban legends and media which are led by the International network of fact-checking. Google explains that it determines whether an article contains the fact check or not by looking for the markup of ClaimReview from schema.org. Publishers can use the ClaimReview markup for the fact check articles to tag their articles with the latest fact check label.
Schema community
Google sponsored the Schema Schema community, which draws support from Yahoo, Microsoft, and Yandex. The ClaimReview markup can be used to organize and compile stories with the factual background.
How fact-check label works?
– The stories that have been marked fact-checked or verified by the schema.org can be applied for the fact-check label by the publisher.
– The publisher must have to ensure that his article must meet the specified criteria before using the label.
– To curb unverified stories Google uses transparent analysis of sources, methods, citations, and references.
– Google has made this tougher for both publishers and organization as now one must ensure that organization is nonpartisan with transparent affiliations and funding.
Though the news fact-check cannot completely curb the false stories but it can surely make them less visible.