Thanks to the phenomenon of "fake news," Google[1] is going to start asking you for help with its search results rather than relying solely on its algorithms.
The search giant said Tuesday that it will make it much easier for anyone to give it feedback on its search results, which is the way that most people use Google. For everyday users, that means that if you see a result featured on Google's pages that you think is wrong or offensive, then you can actually do something about it.
Google framed the problem as a quality issue. "Today, in a world where tens of thousands of pages are coming online every minute of every day, there are new ways that people try to game the system," said vice president of engineering Ben Gomes in an official blog post[2].
According to Google, approximately .25 percent of its results "have been returning offensive or clearly misleading content." The company didn't specify how many queries that really is - but the search-engine-focused news site Search Engine Land reported that Google estimated in 2015 that it handles 3 billion searches per day. Some back-of-the-envelope math suggests that users could be seeing as many as 7.5 million misleading results every day.
Users will see options to report bad information that shows up in "Featured Snippets" - a.k.a., the little summary boxes that appear at the top or sides of Google searches. They will also be able to report offensive autocomplete suggestions - the suggested phrases that show up when you begin typing a query in the search engine.
Users can report suggestions for being hateful, explicit or violent. For the snippets, users can also report when the summaries are inaccurate.
Google...