Fake news and disinformation have become one of the signature problems of the modern internet age. As well as having direct consequences in elections such as the Brexit referendum in the UK and the 2016 US General Election that saw Trump take the White House, fake news around the world has also been radicalizing people and whipping up hate to extreme levels. In a bid to address this, Google is moving to try and ensure that all information served by Google searches is reputable and trustworthy. Let’s check it out.
The change relates to featured snippets, which are parts of webpage content that Google displays directly on the search engine results page. They are cut around the content that most directly relates to the search terms and keywords entered into the search bar. Google has announced in a The Keyword blog post that it is introducing what it calls a significant innovation that will improve the quality of featured snippets.
The innovation involves using Google’s latest AI model to build a better understanding of the consensus that exists around a certain issue. This means it can a greater understanding from third-party sources that have also explored the topic. Google describes the new update like this:
“By using our latest AI model, Multitask Unified Model (MUM), our systems can now understand the notion of consensus, which is when multiple high-quality sources on the web all agree on the same fact. Our systems can check snippet callouts (the word or words called out above the featured snippet in a larger font) against other high-quality sources on the web, to see if there’s a general consensus for that callout, even if sources use different words or concepts to describe the same thing.”
The overall objective of the move is to remove any and all false information from making its way into Google snippets. Even though Google admits that false information is rare in snippets, the search giant says that it has already seen a reduction of 40% since this new update was introduced.
This move follows on from another recent update to search snippets which saw Google improving the quotation mark focus feature for its searches.
