Google will fact-check fake news in its search results

(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

published 7 April 2017

Google debuted a real-time fact-checking feature for its search results Friday morning, a new functionality that prominently displays relevant fact-checks from services like PolitiFact and Snopes at the top of results for stories known to be false or misleading. The fact-check information will be in a separate box distinct from the main list of options, similar to how recipes are already displayed:

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"This information won't be available for every search result, and there may be search result pages where different publishers checked the same claim and reached different conclusions," the search engine said in a blog post announcing the feature. "Even though differing conclusions may be presented, we think it's still helpful for people to understand the degree of consensus around a particular claim and have clear information on which sources agree."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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