Google Updates Its Search Algorithms To Combat Exploitative, Slanderous Websites

Google has started to add some changes to its search algorithms to prevent sites from filling search results with unproven slanderous claims about individuals. 

A New York Times report confirms that the reason for the updates is to combat the vast majority of sites hosting claims about individuals, which according to Times, are unverified and potentially life-ruining. 

The Verge also confirmed this in its report. It added that the search giant is making a series of changes to its rankings to combat these sites. Google’s Vice President for global policy and standards and trust and safety, David Graff said the update should eventually have a “significant and positive impact” for those affected. 

“Now, when users report they’ve been a victim of these sites by using its pre-existing process, Google will register that person as a “known victim,” and will automatically “suppress” similar results for that person’s name,” the Times says.

It’s an important shift considering how these sites operate, where posts are routinely taken from one site and republished across over a dozen more. The Times even conducted an experiment where it created one such post about its own reporter, only to see an initial crop of five posts spawn 21 more across a network of 15 sites. Google’s changes could help to stop these numerous posts from clogging up search results. The NYT reported that completely taking down the posts would have cost it around $20,000. Individual sites and services reportedly charged upwards of $700 to get each post removed.

Some of the changes have reportedly already come into effect, with more coming in the months ahead, but the Times reports that its own tests have highlighted initial problems with the approach. Although it says posts had “mostly” disappeared for some users, it notes that Google’s changes didn’t appear to have caught a new slander site, which may not have received the volume of complaints to put it on Google’s radar yet. However, for others, the new process appeared to work better, with posts disappearing from the first page of text and image results.

The move represents the latest shift away from Google’s original self-proclaimed role as an impartial provider of results. Back in 2004 the company said its results were “generated completely objectively and are independent of the beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google.” But over the years this position has softened, particularly in light of legislation like the EU’s “right to be forgotten.” It means the company is fulfilling an increasingly important role on the web, even beyond the 90 percent of global searches it currently handles.