Last week we covered a new research paper Google published on ranking web pages based on facts. It turns out that some people felt that Google may be using it as a ranking factor in the near future, but that is rarely the case. Either they are already using it or it is just an idea Google wants on paper for patent purposes. Most of the time, it is for patent purposes.
But in the Google+ hangout from yesterday, someone asked John about it at 49:21 minutes into the hangout.
In short, Google's John Mueller said it is just a paper and not something they currently use to rank web pages.
Question:
With the announcement of facts potentially being included as a ranking factor, how will Google handle inaccurate information that can't really be fact checked? An example, a company stating they have X number of facilities in a location when they don't.
Answer:
This was just a research paper that some of our researchers did and not something that we are using in our rankings. We have researchers that do fantastic research that publish tons of papers all the time. And just because they are researching something and trying to see which options are happening there or because maybe they are patenting something or creating new algorithms, it doesn’t mean that is something we are using in search.At the moment, this is a research paper.
I think it's interesting seeing the feedback around that paper and the feedback from the online community, from the people who are creating web pages, from the SEOs who are promoting these pages and also from normal web users whoa re looking at this.
At the moment, this is definitely just research paper and not something that we’re actually using.
Here is the video at the start time of the question:
Matt Cutts said something similar in the past, just because Google owns a patent, doesn't mean they use it.
Forum discussion at Google+.
