Google brings fact-checking to image search

Photos and videos are an incredible way to help people understand what’s going on in the world. But the power of visual media has its pitfalls—especially when there are questions surrounding the origin, authenticity or context of an image.

At the end of June, Google announced they would start surfacing fact check information in Google Images globally to help people make more informed judgments about what they see on the web.

How does it work?

Now, when you search on Google Images, you may see a “Fact Check” label under the thumbnail image results. When you tap one of these results to view the image in a larger format, you’ll see a summary of the fact check that appears on the underlying web page. These labels may appear both for fact check articles about specific images and for fact check articles that include an image in the story.

Fact check labels appear on results that come from independent, authoritative sources on the web that meet Google’s criteria. These sources rely on ClaimReview, an open method used by publishers to indicate fact check content to search engines.

Google was already highlighting fact checks on Search and in Google News to make this content easy to discover. YouTube also leverages ClaimReview to surface fact check information panels in Brazil, India and the U.S. The full fact check library can be accessed through a dedicated search tool and an open API.