Google now lets you ‘Fact Check’ News articles

Mountain View’s Google has announced that its News portal will now include “Fact Check” tags to “help readers find fact checking in large news stories”.

Joining the other tags which include In-Depth, Opinion, and Wikipedia, the Fact Check tag will be located in the expanded story section of articles in Google News. Stories that “that follow the commonly accepted criteria for fact checks” will be listed under the tag.

The tags will effectively reward websites and publications that perform rigorous scrutiny of their sources and claims, based on required markup and their own fact check systems.

Google’s Fact Check tags could be a boon for some websites, a bust for others

“Google News determines whether an article might contain fact checks in part by looking for the schema.org ClaimReview markup,” explains the company’s head of news, Richard Gingras.

Gingras also noted that sites with their own fact checking systems can apply to be one of the sites listed in the Fact Check search results.

While this isn’t a massive change for the end user, being eligible as a Fact Check website might see simple boosts in credibility and rankings in Google Search results.

According to the company, these Fact Check tags will also be visible on its iOS and Android mobile apps, but will first roll out to service those in the US and UK.