Google Works Harder To Flag Offensive Content In Search Results; New Guidelines Out

Google has been facing criticism for quite some time due generating offensive content or misinformation regarding some searches and is now working on checking it. It came up with a new strategy to better flag the offensive or inappropriate content in its result. Though it is not immediately reflected, the move is expected to bring more appropriate results in the long run.

The drive is helped by the more than 10,000 quality raters of Google across the world and these independent contractors work to rate real search results. These ratings and feedbacks are used by Google coders to improve its search quality. It should be noted that the quality raters do not have the options to change the results and they stricly work under the guidelines given by Google. The search giant has handed over the new guidelines to flag the offensive content to the raters, however, it refused to give more about the new guidelines.

It is reported that on Tuesday the firm handed over its new guidelines to flag offensive content that mainly features violence and hate against any group, racial slurs, graphic violence, child abuse, animal cruelty, information that encourages human trafficking among others according to the information revealed by Google. By this, the search giant aims to direct people with queries such as "did Holocaust happen" to trusted and credible sites rather than directing to websites that provide wrong information or hate speech.

Interestingly, the new mechanism would help the searchers get quality results while searching on Google. The results from some white supremacy websites that deny that the Holocaust happened will be potentially flagged in the results, and a well-documented and detailed History channel page that describes what happened during Holocaust won't. It is not clear how effective the new drive is to improve the quality of search results.