Fake News: What to Know for SEO and Digital
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2024 5:14 am
If, as Oscar Wilde claimed, “the important thing is to get people talking about you”, the unstoppable growth of fake news creates a credibility problem for Google and Facebook who are working on their respective algorithms to deny hoaxes. If you do web marketing and SEO , here's what you need to know about the new Google Fact Check tools to take advantage of the fact that Google will decide the ranking based on your honesty (or presumed such).
What are Fake News?
The spread of active use of the web and social media on multiple devices has led to an exponential growth in the amount of information accessible online; having more sources and information, people should be able to better discriminate facts and form an opinion. Here comes the new challenge: how can we easily evaluate whether a content is true or false? News, written by journalists and traditional editorial staff, have always gone through a series of approvals before belgium telegram phone number list published on paper/online. Today these editorial staff are changing, they have been outsourced (freelance), they do not have the budget to check the sources. In addition, social media (where everyone can say what they think) and influencer marketing (which I will talk about soon) are added: in the end, a chaotic situation is created where the most debated/shared information by one's network is that which "is seen in the stream" and as such is considered true. This is how fake news is born, which we define as all that false information because it lacks a reliable source, counterfeited or altered for various purposes; in short, these are hoaxes that, thanks to the voice of the people, have found visibility and a scent of social truthfulness. Wired.com has documented how in Macedonia there is a factory of fake news thanks to which Boris has earned 16 thousand dollars in a few months working on the newsjacking of D. Trump.
SEO & Fact Check
To protect its users from fake news, Google has introduced the 360° Fact-Check , a label or mark up from schema.org that can be applied on the page citing the sources of the information; the presence of the Fact Check is highlighted under the single search result, as shown in the image.
This information is not yet available for all search results and in all languages; there may also be fact checks with different conclusions. Fact checks are not performed by Google or Google News (although in my opinion the user would expect Google or Facebook to verify) and are presented to allow more informed judgments. To have this functionality, publishers must use the Schema.org ClaimReview markup on the specific pages where the verification is done and follow the Google news guidelines and the anti-fake news documentation . A second option is the Duke Share the Facts widget (created for political topics) that can be incorporated into articles and posts with Embed . In general I have noticed that few Italian sites have taken action on hoaxes; on the other hand there are very active US actors such as Snopes that here denies the fake news that appeared on Facebook about the banana that transmits AIDS .
Authority and Google Public Data Explorer
Another strategy of Big G to limit the spread of fake news is to give more prominence to authoritative sites that provide data (which theoretically should do more fact-checking and source checking). Google provides a vertical with an API called Google Public Data Explorer : active since 2011, it has integrated publications and data from institutions and research centers, such as Eurostat, Istat, World Bank. The graphs and links in the database can be inserted (embed) into the page and are updated automatically, as in the case of broadband penetration in the 5 main countries of the EU (Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the United Kingdom if it can still be considered inside).
What are Fake News?
The spread of active use of the web and social media on multiple devices has led to an exponential growth in the amount of information accessible online; having more sources and information, people should be able to better discriminate facts and form an opinion. Here comes the new challenge: how can we easily evaluate whether a content is true or false? News, written by journalists and traditional editorial staff, have always gone through a series of approvals before belgium telegram phone number list published on paper/online. Today these editorial staff are changing, they have been outsourced (freelance), they do not have the budget to check the sources. In addition, social media (where everyone can say what they think) and influencer marketing (which I will talk about soon) are added: in the end, a chaotic situation is created where the most debated/shared information by one's network is that which "is seen in the stream" and as such is considered true. This is how fake news is born, which we define as all that false information because it lacks a reliable source, counterfeited or altered for various purposes; in short, these are hoaxes that, thanks to the voice of the people, have found visibility and a scent of social truthfulness. Wired.com has documented how in Macedonia there is a factory of fake news thanks to which Boris has earned 16 thousand dollars in a few months working on the newsjacking of D. Trump.
SEO & Fact Check
To protect its users from fake news, Google has introduced the 360° Fact-Check , a label or mark up from schema.org that can be applied on the page citing the sources of the information; the presence of the Fact Check is highlighted under the single search result, as shown in the image.
This information is not yet available for all search results and in all languages; there may also be fact checks with different conclusions. Fact checks are not performed by Google or Google News (although in my opinion the user would expect Google or Facebook to verify) and are presented to allow more informed judgments. To have this functionality, publishers must use the Schema.org ClaimReview markup on the specific pages where the verification is done and follow the Google news guidelines and the anti-fake news documentation . A second option is the Duke Share the Facts widget (created for political topics) that can be incorporated into articles and posts with Embed . In general I have noticed that few Italian sites have taken action on hoaxes; on the other hand there are very active US actors such as Snopes that here denies the fake news that appeared on Facebook about the banana that transmits AIDS .
Authority and Google Public Data Explorer
Another strategy of Big G to limit the spread of fake news is to give more prominence to authoritative sites that provide data (which theoretically should do more fact-checking and source checking). Google provides a vertical with an API called Google Public Data Explorer : active since 2011, it has integrated publications and data from institutions and research centers, such as Eurostat, Istat, World Bank. The graphs and links in the database can be inserted (embed) into the page and are updated automatically, as in the case of broadband penetration in the 5 main countries of the EU (Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the United Kingdom if it can still be considered inside).