Google Wants To Rank Websites Based On Facts Not Links

wabrandsma writes about Google's new system for ranking the truthfulness of a webpage. "Google's search engine currently uses the number of incoming links to a web page as a proxy for quality, determining where it appears in search results. So pages that many other sites link to are ranked higher. This system has brought us the search engine as we know it today, but the downside is that websites full of misinformation can rise up the rankings, if enough people link to them. Google research team is adapting that model to measure the trustworthiness of a page, rather than its reputation across the web. Instead of counting incoming links, the system – which is not yet live – counts the number of incorrect facts within a page. 'A source that has few false facts is considered to be trustworthy,' says the team. The score they compute for each page is its Knowledge-Based Trust score. The software works by tapping into the Knowledge Vault, the vast store of facts that Google has pulled off the internet. Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth. Web pages that contain contradictory information are bumped down the rankings."

Comments

Sell any stock before they launch this...

[burtosis]

I mean imagine if they *really* did push down pages with incorrect facts!!!?! ALL religious websites - all homeopathy websites - Fox News all down at the bottom. Not to mention how they would handle irony - it would actually be sad to see sites like The Onion punished. It's a nice idea but would require human level strong AI to automate and it still wouldn't be obvious where to draw the line.

Re:FEO

[mwvdlee]

One the other hand, this will be the end of all religious websites.
After all, I think we can all agree religion isn't factual, right. Right?