Alleged Google Loophole Lets Fake News Flow

January 1, 2017

I read a write up which, like 99 percent of the information available for free via the Internet, is 100 percent accurate.

The write up’s title tells the tale: “Google Does a Better Job with Fake News Than Facebook, but There’s a Big Loophole It Hasn’t Fixed.” What’s the loophole? The write up reports:

…the “newsy” modules that sit at the top of many Google searches (the “In the news” section on desktop, and the “Top stories” section on mobile) don’t pull content straight from Google News. They pull from all sorts of content available across the web, and can include sites not approved by Google News. This is particularly confusing for users on the desktop version of Google’s site, where the “In the news” section lives.Not only does the “In the news” section literally have the word “news” in its name, but the link at the bottom of the module, which says “More news for…,” takes you to the separate Google News page, which is comprised only of articles that Google’s editorial system has approved.

So why isn’t the “In the news” section just the top three Google News results?

The short answer is because Google sees Google Search and Google News as separate products.

The word “news” obviously does not mean news. We reported last week about Google’s effort to define “monopoly” for the European Commission investigating allegations of Google’s being frisky with its search results. News simply needs to be understood in the Google contextual lexicon.

The write up helps me out with this statement:

So why isn’t the “In the news” section just the top three Google News results? The short answer is because Google sees Google Search and Google News as separate products.

Logical? From Google’s point of view absolutely crystal clear.

The write up amplifies the matter:

Google does, however, seem to want to wipe fake news from its platform. “From our perspective, there should just be no situation where fake news gets distributed, so we are all for doing better here,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said recently. After the issue of fake news entered the spotlight after the election, Google announced it would ban fake-news sites from its ad network, choking off their revenue. But even if Google’s goal is to kick fake-news sites out of its search engine, most Google users probably understand that Google search results don’t have carry the editorial stamp of approval from Google.

Fake news, therefore, is mostly under control. The Google users just have to bone up on how Google works to make information available.

What about mobile?

Google AMP is not news; AMP content labeled as “news” is part of the AMP technical standard which speeds up mobile page display.

Google, like Facebook, may tweak its approach to news.

Beyond Search would like to point out that wild and crazy news releases from big time PR dissemination outfits can propagate a range of information (some mostly accurate and some pretty crazy). The handling of high value sources allows some questionable content to flow. Oh, there are other ways to inject questionable content into the Web indexing systems.

There is not one loophole. There are others. Who wants to nibble into revenue? Not Beyond Search.

Stephen E Arnold, January 1, 2017

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, Google, News, Text processing

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.