Google is about to employ a new “fact-based” search ranking system that will promote sites and news outlets that promote factual accuracy and diminish and bury sites that delve heavy into falsified information generated for the sake of click-bait.

The news comes courtesy of the Daily Caller, where tech editor Giuseppe Macri reports that…

“Gawker — the Manhattan-based, media-focused news website that pulls in an estimated 22 million unique views monthly — is one of a number of “gossip websites” that could suffer major absences in search queries as a result of Google’s “Knowledge-Based Trust” system, according to researchers at Google.”

It may be Manhattan-based but they seem to have a lot of offshore financial ties in tax-free institutions, according to Pando Daily.

Nevertheless, in a Google research PDF the group explains…

Quality assessment for web sources is of tremendous importance in web search. It has been traditionally evaluated using exogenous signals such as hyperlinks and browsing history. However,

such signals mostly capture how popular a webpage is. For example, the gossip websites listed in [16] mostly have high PageRank scores [4], but would not generally be considered reliable. Conversely, some less popular websites nevertheless have very accurate information.”

If you click through the [16] on the PDF it takes you to a link from Ebizmba listing the top 15 most popular celebrity gossip sites. These sites are the same sites that Google’s research paper stated “would not generally be considered reliable.”

Yahoo! OMG! TMZ E Online People USMagazine WonderWall Gawker ZimBio PerezHilton HollywoodLife RadarOnline PopSugar WetPaint MediaTakeOut FishWrapper

That’s basically all of the major news outlets that dominate the general news sector. I mean, you open up Gnews for tech or entertainment updates and it’s almost impossible not to see one of those sites or their affiliates listed in there.

In Macri’s Daily Caller article, he writes…

“Under the classic search results system, Gawker ranks in the top 15 percent of Google search results. Under Knowledge-Based Trust — which has yet to go live — Gawker falls to the bottom 50 percent of Knowledge-Based Trust scored websites, according to the report.”

Essentially, Google aims to create a meritocracy out of the search engine results, rewarding those with well sourced facts over outlets pulling information out of thin air or making it up just to help push an agenda.

This looks like Gawker is taking a pretty big beating, especially coming off the FTC investigation that had them amending their privacy policies ahead of an FTC update to help consumers better identify potential federal advertising violations.

I do wonder where this also puts a site like Wikipedia? Some of their entries are noteworthy and very educational, but as we can see with the current #GamerGate entry, it’s purposefully modified by some editors to defame the consumer revolt.

However, if you’re expecting Google’s fact-based system to turn miracles, keep in mind that it’s still not out yet and it doesn’t guarantee that the old ranking system will disappear for good or for all topics. As stated in the Daily Caller article…

“The study does not state how much weight Knowledge-Based Trust rankings will have compared to classic search results.”

Given all the bad press #GamerGate has received from previously considered “reliable sources”, I’m just interested to see if these “reliable sources” will amend and edit their articles before Google’s new system goes live or if they’ll suffer the consequences and get burned by their own factually inaccurate social politics?