Fake news fightback: Google’s search engine revamp to combat offensive search results

‘Google is planning to revamp the algorithm guiding its search engine in an effort to purge misleading and offensive articles from its top results.
In a move widely viewed as a response to criticism over its failure to stop the spread of fake news, ‘raters’ – Google staff who monitor search results – will now be encouraged to flag sites containing hoaxes and conspiracy theories.
Announcing the changes to Bloomberg, Google’s Vice President of Engineering Ben Gomes admitted the company had addressed the problem, saying: “It was not a large fraction of queries – only about a quarter percent of our traffic – but they were important queries.”
“We were highlighting low-quality content in search results,” he added.’
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