Allegations of search engines and social media publicizing and sharing fake news stories have run amuck the past few months. Living in a digital world enables us to have the world literally at our fingertips. What happens when sources we trust are accused of sharing untrue content? How can we differentiate between fact and fiction?
Throughout the last week, Google and Facebook have come up with a plan of action for tackling fake news stories. Today, we will share with you Google’s steps to deal with this growing problem.
- Review websites manually. Sure, Google’s crawlers can search through websites to categorize them in search rankings. However, they can’t determine if the information is true, that’s why Google employees need to manually review websites. Google has criteria in place for news sites to apply to be included in Google News. However, since 2014, Google has enabled traditional search listings to show up in the “In the news” box at the top of the page.
- No incentive for fake news stories. Creators of untrue news sites are after money and influence. Removing the incentive for these people to create the sites is a step towards decreasing the amount of fake news stories out there. Google has announced that they will be banning fake news sites from using AdWords.
- Fact-checked verification. This past October, Google started to include a fact-check label for Google News stories.
Stay tuned for part two in our next blog post, we will be sharing Facebook’s plan for dealing with fake news stories.
Are you curious about the changing world of social media and search engine optimization? Kraus Marketing specializes in digital marketing, SEO, and social media. We help companies in the tri-state area create and implement successful digital marketing campaigns. Contact us today to learn how we can help you.