Fake news quickly became a destructive force last autumn after  grabbing the headlines. Search engines soon jumped into battle against Fake News websites and publishers in order to defend their ground. As many will be aware, Google and Facebook have been two of the major companies affected by fake news concerns. They have since started coming forward with tactics and solutions to tackle those bending the truth.

Facebook announced a series of guidelines that were aimed to help users spot and report fake news whilst blocking the ad services for fake news publishers. Google adopted similar strategies in an effort to defend its search quality. They named this effort ‘Project Owl’ and it includes 3 different actions they took against the problem.

In this post we are bringing you the latest developments, as well as Google’s strategies to battle fake news, and what you can do to take action in defence of quality Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

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Problematic Search Suggestions Reporting System

In February, Google rolled out a test that would give users the opportunity to report any offensive and problematic search suggestions. This way, Google hopes to collect enough insightful data in order to change their algorithm to improve search suggestions, instead of having to go around checking and removing problematic and obscure search suggestions manually. Nonetheless, a problematic suggestion won’t disappear in a day,  it might take some time while Google is finding the best solution that hopefully pushes it back or deletes it.

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Featured Snippets Feedback Form

Google has been concerned about irrelevant and inaccurate featured snippets. These position 0 listings appear whenever Google’s algorithm believes that a result answers a specific query very accurately. Fake news and problematic search results also affect voice searches since featured snippets are sometimes the answer that Google Home gives in response to people’s specific voice queries. Problematic responses are now creating debate around the usability and trustworthiness of Google Home. Google is fighting back with a feedback form dedicated only to serve featured snippets in order to improve the results. In addition, there is also a special feedback system through Google Home for the users to orally report an irrelevant or offensive response.

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Improving Search Quality

Google is also attacking problematic Featured Snippets in the SERPs. It’s doing this by improving search quality in general and trying to make more authoritative content more visible for rare queries. Google won’t say what makes a page more authoritative than others, but admits there’s not only one signal. Something to note, though, is that Google’s SERPs are still better and more relevant than Bing’s from what people are reporting.

Google is tackling the fake news problem with two forms of attack.  First, it is trying to suppress content that looks like it’s quality but it’s not. And second, it is trying to give a boost to more authoritative content at the same time.  Google hasn’t given out any specific information on how they are tweaking their algorithm and what the new ranking factors will be. However, we can safely assume that pages are going to be rewarded if they are factually accurate.   Google loves accurate and trustworthy results, therefore our guess is that at some point there will be this long-awaited shift in ranking websites according to fact-checking accuracy in addition to the all important  quality link building.

What can you do to become more authoritative?

• Always run a fact check when editing your content.
• Make sure you rely on several trusted sources. Internet websites often give incorrect information so double check your copy to ensure it is backed up by a number of sources.
• Be sure that you are sharing facts. If you are not 100% certain don’t post your article.
• Fulfil user intent as best as you can. Always ask yourself, what do my users want to know? and write about that.
• Reference your sources using the Claim Review Schema.

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Beat the fake news sites in the SERPs

If you want to ensure your website is robust and authoritative enough to ensure it’s beating fake news sites in the SERPS speak to the Tamar experts.  We can help you implement structured data as well as ensuring your content is authoritative so you can reach position 0 and overtake the fake news sites.