SEO Wash-up Monday 31st October

Google partners with International Fact-Checking Network to train more new fact checkers on a global scale

With fake news always flying about and the exploitation of Google and other big companies such as Twitter and Facebook. Fake news can spread like wild fire! Google has hundreds of articles that are published online every day, and the amount of content people are reading online can be overwhelming. However, not all of it is factual or true, which makes it hard for people to differentiate fact from fiction.

Companies such as Google have taken the correct measures to identify false claims. As Google have a partnership with International Fact-Checking Network that was launched by the Poynter Institute. They seek to identify fact-checking practices such as PolitiFact, Factcheck.org, The Washington Post and a few other.

The following are what Google’s new fact-checking will aim to seek out:

• Google will provide access to a number of fact-checking tools that are free
• Engineering resources that will develop fact-checking software tool to improve your efficiency
• Increase the number of trained fact checkers on a global scale
• Grow fast-checking capabilities globally

This tool is mainly to identify and remove doubtful or unwanted claims that are published online, especially Google Search and Google News as it helps users find useful information by surfacing the great content that publishers and sites create. However, the fact checking may not necessarily get rid of all the false news or article but is a critical tool that will help users recognise reliable journalism.

Facebook’s outsourced partnerships brings a lot of used car listings to their Marketplace

The Marketplace that was rolled out in 2016 has been growing rapidly and had a good response from users. Facebook has now introduced their new partnership with third party deals that bring more used cars to the Facebook Marketplace. The third party partnerships are Cars.com, CDK Global, SocialDealer, Auction123 and Edmunds.

The new section in the Marketplace allows car buys the following:

• Allows you to browse and search through their car inventory
• Allows you to filter by specific criteria
• Allows you to interact with specific dealerships through the Facebook Messenger

Facebook’s Marketplace has also other categories such as jobs, products, housing and tickets. However, there is no public data on user numbers or transactions. The Marketplace has potential to grow bigger and source leads and volume for their categories and could be a potential threat to eBay in the future.