Google wants to rank websites based on facts not links...

[MrDawn]

"Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth"
I think I found the flaw in the plan.
Find a single 'fact' that the whole Internet agrees on.

The trustworthiness of a web page might help it rise up Google's rankings if the search giant starts to measure quality by facts, not just links

THE internet is stuffed with garbage. Anti-vaccination websites make the front page of Google, and fact-free "news" stories spread like wildfire. Google has devised a fix – rank websites according to their truthfulness.

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.

A 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 (arxiv.org/abs/1502.03519v1). 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.

More at the link...

Google wants to rank websites based on facts not links

 

[#assassin]

Hmm. Well, that's... interesting. Nothing is agreed upon by everyone, however. The vast majority, perhaps, but not everyone.

 

[alakazam]

I wonder how this will affect forums. Online forums are not really made to post facts, but rather personal opinions, so will this mean that they will rank lower than sites and blogs?

 

[+paradox]

so basically, google wants to choose what's a fact and what's not a fact?

but what if google gets it wrong or make something a fact when it's not on purpose to write or rewrite history?

 

[identityissues8]

I wonder what will happen when I type in 'Israel-Palestine' or anything about the 'War on Terror'.