Washington - Thanks to the phenomenon of "fake news," Google is going to start asking you for help with its search results rather than relying solely on its algorithms.
The search giant said Tuesday that it will make it much
easier for anyone to give it feedback on its search results, which is the way
that most people use Google. For everyday users, that means that if you see a
result featured on Google's pages that you think is wrong or offensive, then
you can actually do something about it.
Google framed the problem as a quality issue. "Today,
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," said
vice president of engineering Ben Gomes in an official blog post.
According to Google, approximately 25 percent of its results
"have been returning offensive or clearly misleading content." The
company didn't specify how many queries that really is - but the
search-engine-focused news site Search Engine Land reported that Google estimated
in 2015 that it handles 3 billion searches per day.
Some back-of-the-envelope math suggests that users could be
seeing as many as 7.5 million misleading results every day. Users will see
options to report bad information that shows up in "Featured Snippets",
aka, the little summary boxes that appear at the top or sides of Google
searches.
They will also be able to report offensive auto complete
suggestions - the suggested phrases that show up when you begin typing a query
in the search engine. Users can report suggestions for being hateful, explicit
or violent. For the snippets, users can also report when the summaries are
inaccurate.
Google has also tweaked its search algorithms to ensure that
"low-quality" content shows up lower in search results, which should
minimize their reach. This should address issues such as one Google dealt with
last year, when a prominent Holocaust denial site showed up at the top of
search results for "did the holocaust happen."
Since the US
election, several companies including Google and Facebook have taken steps to
deal with false information that looks legitimate being passed through their
products.
Read also: Google, Facebook in 'fake news' furore
In the past, both
companies have been hesitant to step in and provide quality controls for
information that appears on their products, preferring instead to let their
algorithms weed out bad results.
And like Facebook, Google has recently undertaken broader
efforts to fight misleading information and hate speech online. The company has
started pairing some claims online with fact-check articles, which say whether
a claim is true or false. It has also released a tool for developers to let
them automatically moderate online messages better.
Google users will start seeing the reporting options
Tuesday. This particular effort has been underway since mid-December, said
Google spokeswoman Susan Cadrecha in an email.
WASHINGTON
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