Google already provides some context around search results to help you understand the news, and now it’s add more tools to make sure you have the big picture. For starters, there’s a new Insights carousel that provides insights from experts, journalists, and “other relevant voices” for a given hot topic. You can see actor and critic takes after the Oscars, for example. Perspectives will soon be available in the United States for English-speaking users.
You can also learn more about the authors of the reports. An “About This Author” feature located in “About This Result” will display the background of creators and encourage the use of trusted sources. Google deploys author information worldwide in English, and you’ll also find it in the Perspectives carousel.
The company is simultaneously upgrading some of its existing features. “About This Result” will be available for all search languages in the coming days. Notices for fast-developing stories are also coming to French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese users. And if you put an organization’s web address into a search, you’ll now get “About this page” information near the top. You’ll have a better idea of whether that organization’s site is worth visiting.
The additional features help flesh out Google’s larger offering for fight misinformation and promote information literacy through education, fact-checking and supplemental information. Ideally, researchers will both seek more reliable information and escape media bubbles that reinforce bias. It’s unclear how much the additions will help in practice (it does require a desire to double-check the content, after all), and it won’t fend off accusations of bias. against Google itself. However, they can be especially useful for students who want to check the quality of their sources for essays and research papers.
