How to Get the Fact-Check Label From Google

Recently, I wrote a post about the new Google’s Fact Checking feature that highlights articles with facts that have been confirmed in search results. Now we can Google rumors and check whether they are true or not.

There are no stats to support the implication that the fact checking label impacts how your websites are displayed by the search engine in response to a certain search query and the content promotion yet, but common sense tells us that users are more willing to read and engage with a fact-checked article than a non-checked one. Let’s discover how you can join the fact-checked community.

Discover Who Is In the Game

Before trying to get a label, it’s worth looking at those who already became Google’s partner in fact checking. The database of global fact-checking sites includes 115 authoritative sources. The most prominent among them are FactCheck.org and Politifact in the U.S. (News section), and Full Fact and First Draft in France and UK. To get on this list, you must be an organization without a strong political position that regularly publishes articles that assess the accuracy of the statements made by the public officials– and you should also meet the search engine requirements, of course.

Learn How to Add the Fact-Check Label to Your Content

According to Google, publishers will be screened stringently and only those that are “algorithmically determined to be an authoritative source of information” will be included in the system as a trusted source of information. Yes, this phrase hardly says anything, but there are instructions that clearly explains how a website can get a label:

1. Use the Schema.org ClaimReview markup on the specific pages where they fact check public statements.

2. You can choose the Share the Facts widget developed by the Duke University Reporters Lab and Jigsaw. Integrate it into the article just like you would with a tweet or a Facebook post.

3. Check whether the article meets the following criteria:

• Discrete, with the verifications easily identifiable in the body of the fact-check articles so the readers are able to understand what was checked, and what conclusions were reached;
• The analysis must be transparent in terms of sources and methods used, with citations and references to the primary sources;
• Article titles must indicate that a claim is being reviewed, facts are verified, or simply state that the article’s contents consist of the fact checking.

4. Make sure the content adheres to:

• General policies that apply to all structured data markup;
• Google News General Guidelines.

5. Check your website on errors with SEO audit tools like SE Ranking.

Put the Label to the Test

Let’s analyze two cases of fact-checked news– the tweet by Trump about saving “millions of jobs” during his first foreign trip as a President and the rumors that NASA is recruiting volunteers to lay in bed and smoke marijuana for some research.

The Washington Post got the label for the first case as well as Politifact.com and Factcheck.org for the second.

Let’s see if they meet the requirements above:

1. All fact checking results are easily accessible in the title and entry.

2. They are clearly structured.

3. Subsections are devoted to the facts and their exposure.

4. The text begins with a question and a short answer, and after that you can read a long text with all the facts.

5. There are links to the primary sources

• The Washington Post denies Trump’s statement, referring to 7 sources in the article.
• FactCheck adds links to 11 sources in a separate block.

6. There is a special fact checking tool “under the hood”

• The Washington post uses the ClaimReview markup, which prescribes which fact is checked, from whose submission and with what result.
• Politifact and FactCheck use the widget developed by the Duke University Reporters Lab.

As you can see, the publications above fully meet the Google criteria for fact checks. Which means we should try it too.

Remember, that earlier (from November to December 2016) Google already reviewed 550 sites that were suspected of misrepresenting content to users, including impersonating news organizations, and nearly 200 publishers were kicked out of the network permanently partly in response to the proliferation of the fake news sites.

Given this, it is better to take fact checking seriously, when it is not so important, then to be unexpectedly banned in the future.