After introducing fact-check features to Search and News, Google announced on Monday that it was “surfacing fact-check information in Google Images globally to help people navigate these issues and make more informed judgments about what they see on the web”.
As of June 22, searches on Google Images have triggered a “Fact-Check” label under the thumbnail image results. Tapping one of the results to view the image in a larger format reveals a summary of the fact-check that appears on the underlying web page. The labels may appear for fact-check articles about specific images and for fact-check articles that include an image in the story.
Fact-check labels appear on results that come from independent, authoritative sources on the web that meet Google’s criteria, the media giant said.
For these sources, Google uses ClaimReview, an open method used by publishers to indicate fact-check content to search engines. For instance, YouTube also leverages ClaimReview to surface fact-check information panels in Brazil, India and the US. The full fact-check library can be accessed through a dedicated search tool and an open API.
“Just as is the case in Search, adding this label in Google Images results does not affect ranking; our systems are designed to surface the most relevant, reliable information available, including from sources that provide fact-checks,” Google said.
“Taken together, these efforts not only highlight the significant contributions of the fact-check community, but they also ensure that people have access to critical context about the information—and now images—they encounter online,” Google added.