Google announces four new features to verify information and images online

This Tuesday, Google announced four search features that help users “quickly evaluate information” that is online and obtain key context, as International Fact Checking Day is marked.

“To give more people access to these tools, we have expanded two features — About this image and About this page – to over 40 languages ​​worldwide, including Portuguese“, says the technology company, in a statement.

O International Fact Checking Day, which is marked this Tuesday, April 2nd, is a global initiative that recognizes the crucial role of accurate information in an interconnected world.

One of the features announced by Google allows you to find out more about a website in “more about this page”.

In other words, “you can recognize many websites in your search results, but there may be others that you don’t know — and that you would like to know more about” and this feature “allows you to get context about a particular website before clicking on it”, explains Google.

For such, “just click on the three dots next to the website name in the search results and tap the ‘more about this page’ tab”, information about the online page will be made available“such as the way Wikipedia describes it (when available) and what others on the ‘web’ have said about it”, he adds.

This way, “the user will be able to make a more informed decision about a possible visit”. This functionality is available in more than 40 additional languages ​​globally, including Portuguese.

Another feature allows you to find fact checks in the results. According to technology, if you are curious about a rumor you heard in a conversation, “independent fact-checking organizations may have already investigated this topic”.

In other words, “we make it easy to find fact-checks published by independent and trustworthy sources on the web”, so “if a fact-check article is relevant to your search, a preview may appear in the results of research”.

Additionally, “these results will also display snippets to help the user gain context about a specific claim that has been made.”

Fact Check Explorer is another feature that “helps journalists and fact-checkers delve deeper into a given topic”and when researching a topic, they can easily find fact checks that have already been investigated by independent organizations around the world, says the technology company.

From now on, “you can use Fact Check Explorer to find out more about an image.”

Previously “only available in beta, This feature allows you to upload or copy the link to an image in Fact Check Explorer to see if that same image has already been used in a fact check.”.

Journalists and fact checkers “can also use it through the Fact Check Tools API, which gives them the ability to show fact checks relevant to an image in their own products and websites.”

A fourth feature concerns ‘About this Image’, which “offers a quick way to find out more information and get context from the images you see online”.

This allows you to obtain the history of an image, how other websites use and describe the image and its metadata.