Google is updating its search to demote fake news

Google is demoting misleading and offensive content in its search by updating algorithms and offering users new ways to report bad results. The change follows increased attention to flaws in top search results, including the promotion of fake news — and deliberately misleading or false information formatted to look like news — during the 2016 presidential election.

Google said it has updated its algorithms to better prioritize “authoritative” content. Content may be deemed authoritative based on signals such as affiliation of a site with a university or verified news source, how often other sites link to the site in question and the quality of the sites that link. “We’ve adjusted our signals to help surface more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content, so that issues similar to the Holocaust denial results that we saw back in December are less likely to appear,” writes Ben Gomes, Google’s executive in charge of search, in a blog post published today. Additionally, users can now flag autocomplete features and highlighted results that are offensive, false or otherwise problematic. “We plan to use this feedback to help improve our algorithms,” writes Gomes.