The power of investigative journalism manages a win, with Google rolling out fixes for the misinformation plaguing its systems over the past weeks.
There’s no denying it: when you need to find something, you typically make your way to Google or another search engine, and simply go looking. That’s how life is for most people, opting for the search system of their choice.
Whether it’s Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or one of the many AI systems able to search through a variety of topics and sites, searching to find what we need is just a part of life.
But what happens when search gives us the wrong information, or more specifically, gives us factually incorrect misinformation? What if the information it provides comes from a place of potential disinformation?
That’s been the case for searches about headlight rules and license changes and other important topics for the better part of several weeks, as intentionally fake information has flooded the web built specifically to manipulate search and bring people to new sites.
None were news sites, and the information published wasn’t close to accurate. Rather, it was intentional misinformation designed to deceive, and possibly lead readers into a potential scam, maybe to even remove money from their lives.
It included fake driving rules with potential fines, changes to pensions, and more, and not just in Australia, but other parts of the world. Websites targeting users and searches in Australia, New Zealand, the US, UK, Canada, and the Philippines, the name a few, were loaded with information that clogged up search and appeared in Google’s results and AI overviews, as well as other systems.
An investigation by Pickr explored what was going on, with over 100 old websites being snapped up and converted to publishers running this misinformation, many of which were filled with ads, malware-laden redirections, and a link to a finance WhatsApp channel, the latter of which is a plausible approach for financial scams.
The stories invariably included images of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese juxtaposed on backgrounds with the topic and headline in text on the background, while international variations used government officials from other locations.
Ultimately, it grew to well over a hundred sites being found, a list that is still growing.
As part of the investigation, Pickr passed details of the affected sites to both Google and Australia’s domain authority, auDA, with the intent on clearing the sites from search. The team at auDA conducted reviews and found many of the sites violated their policies, cancelling them in the process.
And auDA wasn’t the only one.
Google rolls out fixes
The good news is fixes are coming, with the misinformation affecting daily life hopefully coming to a standstill in the coming days. Especially important given officials have noted on radio questions about laws and rules that have no basis in fact or reality.
In a bit of an exclusive, Google also investigated Pickr’s findings and is rolling out fixes, noting that:
We aim to surface relevant, high quality information in all our Search features and we continue to raise the bar for quality with ongoing updates and improvements. When issues arise including if our features misinterpret web content or miss some context, we use those examples to improve and take appropriate action under our policies.
Google Spokesperson
The policies Google talks about specifically cover inaccurate information in civics, such as with education, government, and other important areas that aren’t supposed to be tampered with, and how they appear in one of Google’s search features, the “featured snippet”.
Appearing almost like an AI overview, the featured snippet is a portion of text from the best matched website to a query (in Google’s eyes), standing out amongst the regular course of Google results.
Manipulating these positions appears to be what might have prompted Google to act, and the results are already showing as working.
While we’re still seeing some new sites pushing more misinformation into Google, particularly into its AI mode, most of the searches that would previously have seen the flawed content appear to have been culled
That said, it’s early days and those fixes are still rolling out, a move which should hopefully affect and improve the results, extracting the 130-odd websites we’ve tracked thus far that have very little to do with anything beyond being intentionally fraudulent.
It’s not every day a journalist helps make the web slightly safer, but here we are. Achievement unlocked.
