Google will always provide the most useful results for users in its search engine. However, there are times when the information you’re looking for might not be yet on the Internet or the one published won’t be the most reliable.
To help tackle this, the Tech Giant now prompts users on Search result pages in instances when results might not be reliable. The company now has systems that help to detect when a topic is rapidly evolving and a range of sources has not yet weighed in.
Users are to watch out for a notice that indicates that it may be best to check back later when more information from a wider range of sources might be available to them.
As seen in the above screenshot, users will receive a message stating that “it looks like these results are changing quickly”. They will be notified further that “if this topic is new, it can sometimes take time for results to be added by reliable sources.”
The company’s public liaison for Search, Danny Sullivan, has said that the prompt will appear for searches with many recent hits but few from reputable sites.
While speaking to Recode, Sullivan cited a recent instance in Wales where a UFO sighting was reported and received little mainstream coverage but nonetheless spread rapidly among conspiracy theorists.
“Someone had gotten this police report video released in Wales, and it’s had a little bit of press coverage. But there’s still not a lot about it,” said Sullivan. “But people are probably searching for it, they may be going around on social media — so we can tell it’s starting to trend. And we can also tell that there’s not a lot of necessarily great stuff that’s out there. And we also think that maybe new stuff will come along,”
Evelyn Douek, one of Harvard’s researchers who studies online speech noted that this is a great way of making people pause before they act on or spread information further. According to her, “It doesn’t involve anyone making judgments about the truth or falsity of any story but just gives the readers more context. … In almost all breaking news contexts, the first stories are not the complete ones, and so it’s good to remind people of that.”
There are still some questions about how this all will work, though. For example, it’s not clear exactly what sources Google finds to be reliable on a given search result, and how many reliable sources need to weigh in before a questionable trending news topic loses the label. As the feature rolls out more broadly, we can likely expect to see more discussion about how it’s implemented.
