Google is highlighting the work it’s done to surface more fact checked content in search results.
As a fairly new initiative, Google has been displaying fact check labels in SERPs for almost 3 years. Fact checks now appear in search results over 11 million times a day, which includes global search results and Google News in five countries.
That adds up to a total of roughly 4 billion impressions per year. Displaying fact check labels is made possible with ClaimReview markup; a special type of schema markup that allows fact-checkers to identify whether claims made on web page are true or not.
Related: What is Schema Markup & Why It’s Important for SEO
Web pages that contain ClaimReview markup are returned in search results with a snippet like the one shown below:
The markup allows web pages to display a snippet that clearly lays out for searchers what the claim is, who made the claim, and whether the fact checkers found it to be true or false. All of the fact checked claims are available in a publicly available search tool, which lets you search through a database of over 40,000 fact checks.
Google intends to increase the adoption of structured data fields for fact checks by working with the Duke Reporters’ Lab and the International Fact-Checking Network.
“The information generated by these efforts might provide valuable context for people as they use Google products—for instance, we could surface the origin of a miscaptioned image or background on the creator of a manipulated video. In 2020, we’ll continue our work to provide users with useful context about the content they access online and offline.”
To ensure that this work continues, Google will explore new models to support the long-term sustainability of the fact-checking field.
