Google’s new fact-check filter works — sometimes
Whether snippets turn up that might identify a false claim depends a lot on how you ask the question
Was former SAN FRANCIS CO President Barack Obama’s birth certificate faked so he could run for office? It depends on how you ask Google.
The search engine giant last week expanded a test fact-checking program worldwide in a bid to help stop the spread of misinformation after it faced criticism for returning fake and offensive information in its search queries.
USA TODAY tested the feature, asking Google a range of questions previously proved false — and some known to be true.
The result: Whether an answer surfaced what Google calls a “fact-check snippet” depended on how you phrased the question and whether the topic had been fact-checked by an organization taking part in Google’s program. The snippets aren’t tags on specific stories but rather on search words or phrases that appear in the list of results.
Search “Obama Kenyan citizen” and a fact-check snippet pops up from Snopes.com, detailing reasons why a purported Kenyan birth certificate for Obama was a fake. Search “Obama birth certificate fake,” however, and no snippet turns up. Instead, the first link is a story from WorldNetDaily, a site run by leading birther proponent Joseph Farah, which says Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate was faked.
The responses highlight the difficulties the world’s most popular search engine faces as it works to offer users more authoritative and credible information.
Google had been running a limited test fact-check program in the U.S. and the United Kingdom for articles on news.google.com since October. The new rollout applies to all searches worldwide — not just news — in all languages it supports. The inclusion of a fact-check topic won’t af- fect the ranking of search results.
The information in the factcheck tags comes from third-party fact-checking organizations. In the U.S. those include PolitiFact .org, FactCheck.org, Snopes.com, The Washington Post, The New York Times and GossipCop.com. Internationally there are between 50 and 100 groups offering tags, Google said. The fact-checking doesn’t just cover political stories, but a broader swathe including science and health. The search terms that trigger fact-check snippets depend on whether a given topic has been the subject of a fact-check and what words and phrases were tagged. While it’s unclear if the results might sway those committed to a specific point of view, they give a sense of the power Google has to tailor search results for a specific purpose. The Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant’s move comes a month after Facebook began adding a “disputed” warning tag to some articles with no basis in fact. Thus far, the tags seem to be most often triggered by long-existing false stories. For example, a search in Google’s main search box of the phrase “kidney theft” gives a top return that links to a Snopes.com article debunking a popular, and false, Internet topic about unwary travelers being drugged and used as unwilling kidney donors by organ thieves. The system isn’t partisan and any fact-check organization that wants to can take part, as long as it abides by Google’s terms of service. They require that analysis “be transparent about sources and methods, with citations and references to primary sources.” Each snippet comes with a Feedback link for users to respond. Overall, Google sees the fact-checking tags as part of its mission to organize information and make it accessible and useful. The company believes fact-checking by professional fact-checkers will return content that is more useful to searchers.