Google Search will stop telling you when Snoopy assassinated Abe Lincoln

The team behind Google Search is tweaking its featured snippets — the text boxes that sometimes spread false information while trying to offer help. The company announced an update that’s supposed to make answers more accurate and avoid the problem of false premises, or questions where no definitive-sounding answer would make sense. It’s paired with an expansion in Google’s “about this result” option and warnings for low-quality data voids, as well as a new partnership on information literacy lesson plans for middle and high-school students.

Snippets appear under many searches, but because they appear to directly answer questions by quoting pages, they can backfire in ways that standard query responses don’t. In a presentation to...

Continue reading…