Google News won’t show results from websites that hide their country of origin

‘Sites included in Google News must not misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about their ownership’

Google News warns sites not to hide country of origin. (REUTERS)

In a new attempt to crack down on fake news, Google has updated its guidelines for its Google News services.

Google has now prohibited websites that misrepresent or conceal their country of origin or are directed at users in another country under false premises.

"Sites included in Google News must not misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about their ownership or primary purpose, or engage in coordinated activity to mislead users," states the company guidelines.

Google also allows publishers to file a spam report if they believe that another publisher has violated Google News inclusion guidelines.

"While we may not take manual action in response to every report, spam reports are prioritised based on user impact, and in some cases may lead to complete removal of a spammy site from Google News results," Google added.

The move to keep dishonest sites from appearing in Google News comes in the wake of mounting pressure on the Internet giant to do more to stop the spread of fake news after allegations of Russian attempts to influence the 2016 US presidential election surfaced, Engadget reported late Saturday.

Apart from Google, Facebook is also hard at work to tackle the growing problem of fake news on its platform. The social media giant said it is using cutting-edge technology such as Artificial Intelligence to take down such content.

"We want to make sure that everyone who comes to Facebook will know that they get high-quality, credible news," said Alexandra Hardiman at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit last month.