Information Quality – How Google Search Works

Helping you evaluate information online

People around the world turn to Search to find information, learn about topics they’re interested in, and make important decisions. These days, it can feel like information is coming from every direction. It’s probably happened to you before: you caught a few minutes of a news broadcast, came across a viral meme or photo on social media, or received a message from a family member in a group chat - and you may not feel like you got the whole story.

The widespread availability of information – from all different kinds of sources – is great for learning new facts and perspectives from around the world. But it can also make it difficult to evaluate the reliability of information or sources.

Google Search is built from the ground up to deliver reliable, helpful, and high-quality information. But we know that understanding the quality of information for yourself has never been more important, which is why we provide tools to help you evaluate information you find.

A Google Search with a green check next to a rainforest image, a highly-cited label, and a message that says “these results are changing quickly”

How we help:

High-quality, reliable information

Systems and processes designed to surface useful information

Google ranking systems are designed to sort through hundreds of billions of webpages in our index to find the most relevant, useful results and present them in a way that helps you find what you’re looking for.

When we identify a way to improve Search, we put all possible changes through a rigorous evaluation process to analyze metrics and decide whether to implement a proposed change. Data from these evaluations and experiments go through a careful review by experienced data scientists, product managers, and engineers who then determine if the change is approved to launch. Launches also go through additional evaluations, such as privacy and legal review.

A magnifying glass inspecting web content

Get the full story with Google News

Our automated systems are designed to surface news from authoritative sources, and we require publishers to follow our Google News policies to appear in News results.

For many news stories, you can view the Full Coverage feature which links to articles from news outlets covering that story, helping you find multiple perspectives all in one place.

With some current events, you may see additional context when you search for the topic. For example, if you’re searching for major events you may see context like the people involved or additional news about the topic - right from the search results page.

Tools to help you evaluate what’s reliable

Tools to help you critically evaluate information online

About this result provides details about a website before you visit it, including its description, when it was first indexed and what others say about the source and topic. This information can help you learn more about an unfamiliar site. You can decide whether or not to visit it and if you feel the site will provide reliable information.

We also added more information about the source right into the Google iOS app so you have this context anywhere you are online. This will be launching in Android in the coming months.

Fact check tools to verify what you see online

Fact Check Explorer allows you to easily browse and search for fact check articles from independent sources that may have investigated the topic you’re searching for. Keywords entered in this tool can be anything from specific topics to full quotes.

A search box labeled “Fact Check Explorer”

Reverse image search helps you see the full picture

To check and see if an image may have been altered or is being used out of context you can search Google with an image. This is called a reverse image search, and it can help you assess where and when the image has appeared online before, and how it was used. This can help you understand if it was taken out of context - like being taken in a different place or under different circumstances than what’s being claimed.

Make sense of what you find in the moment

Advisories to provide insight when needed most

One of the most important pieces of context we can provide is letting you know when helpful or relevant information isn’t available on the web. This could be true in a rapidly evolving event, where interest in a topic can often travel faster than the facts – or when relevant information simply doesn’t exist for your search. In these moments, we alert you with a notice recommending that you check back later or try another search.

An info box that says “These results are changing quickly”

Fact Checks to give you more context

Fact check articles by independent organizations can help you quickly assess whether or not something is true. You might see fact checks in regular Google search results. This makes it easy to spot fact checks published by independent sources on the web. We highlight relevant fact check articles in results in Search, News and Google Images to ensure you get the full context while you’re searching.

Labels to help know which stories have been highly cited

The news is moving faster than ever online today and it can help to identify stories that have been frequently cited by other news organizations. Now when a significant number of news stories are linking to a particular article or piece of content, Google will label it as highly cited. This will help you better understand the original source of a story.