There are times when you come to YouTube to catch up on the latest news or to simply learn more about topics that you're curious about. For content where accuracy and authoritativeness are key, including news, politics, medical and scientific information, we use machine-learning systems that prioritise information from authoritative sources and provide context to help you make informed decisions.
Raising authoritative voices
There are a lot of signals – such as relevance and popularity – that typically matter when our systems determine what videos to show when you're searching for content. However, when it comes to news and information, we know that authoritativeness is key. That's why we're committed to helping these users discover authoritative sources when it comes to news and information across our platform.
A watch page for news content on YouTube
To help viewers explore different sides of a news story and form their own opinion of the world, we launched a watch page that brings together a collection of news content from authoritative and diverse sources on YouTube.
Now, in one place, it’s easier to explore content related to a specific news story across multiple formats such as live streams and Shorts. On the watch page, viewers will see sections for:
- Latest Updates, with the most recent video coverage of the news story
- Explanations and Commentary, with additional context on the news topic
- Live News, with live streams showing what’s happening in the moment
- Shorts, to quickly catch up on the news story’s latest updates
Viewers can open the watch page for a specific news story by clicking on a video with the newspaper icon on the YouTube homepage, news destination page, or in search results.
*Mock Display. For Illustration Purposes Only
Breaking news
When a major breaking news event happens in your country, we want to make sure that you are aware and can easily access authoritative information. In those cases, the Breaking News shelf appears directly on your homepage. It features relevant videos from authoritative news sources about news events of national importance.
*Feature availability varies by country and we are working to expand to more countries.
Breaking news shelf on the homepage during major breaking news events
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How does YouTube determine what breaking news is?
You may see Breaking News videos on the homepage for events such as large-scale tragedies, natural disasters and momentous occurrences in national and international politics. In order to highlight breaking news relevant in your country, we rely on Google News to understand what is happening in the world and when a news story is breaking.
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Top news
When you proactively search for news-related topics, you will often see a Top News section near the top of search results, which raises relevant results from authoritative voices including news sources like ABC News (Australia) and Sky News Australia. A Top News shelf may also be shown on your homepage if you watch or search for news content. The Top News shelf will appear regardless of age, and will include relevant content from news sources that follow Google News content policies.
*Feature availability varies by country and we are working to expand to more countries.
Top news shelf: Raises relevant results from authoritative voices in search results
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Elevating authoritative sources
We raise authoritative voices for newsworthy events in search results and 'Up next' panels. In addition to current events, authoritativeness is also important when it comes to topics prone to misinformation, such as vaccines. In these cases, we aim to surface videos from experts, like public health institutions, in search results.
*Feature availability varies by country and we are working to expand to more countries.
Authoritative voices for newsworthy events get prioritised in search results and 'Up next' panels
Providing context to help you make informed decisions
Context is critical when evaluating information, so we give you context alongside certain search results and videos to help you make your own decisions about the content that you find on YouTube. To do this, we highlight text-based information about certain events, topics and publishers from third-party sources using information panels across YouTube.
Developing news
In developing news situations, when high-quality video may not be immediately available, we display links to text-based news articles from authoritative sources in YouTube search results. We will also provide a reminder that developing news can rapidly change. We rely on Google News signals to surface this.
*Feature availability varies by country and we are working to expand to more countries.
Developing news information panels link to news articles alongside search results during developing news
Fact checks
Our fact-check information panels provide additional context by highlighting relevant, third-party fact-checked articles above search results for relevant queries, so that you can make your own informed decision about claims made in the news.
There are many factors that determine whether a fact-check information panel will appear for any given search. Most importantly, there must be a relevant fact-check article available from an eligible publisher. And in order to match your needs with the information that we provide, fact checks will be shown when you search for a specific claim. For example, if you search for 'did Queensland suffer floods', you might see a relevant fact-check article, but if you search for a more general query like 'floods', you may not.
Our fact-check information panels rely on an open network of third-party publishers and leverage the ClaimReview tagging system. All publishers are welcome to participate, providing they follow the publicly available ClaimReview structured data guidelines, and are either part of the International Fact-Checking Network or are an authoritative publisher.
*Feature availability varies by country and we are working to expand to more countries.
Fact checks: Recently fact-checked claims are shown alongside search results
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Topics prone to misinformation
For well-established historical and scientific topics that are often subject to misinformation, such as 'Apollo moon landing', general reference articles linking to third-party sources appear alongside related search results and videos to provide more context. We do this by surfacing contextual information from third-party sources, including Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia, alongside videos and search results. We have started with a small group of topics based on third-party sources as we test and roll out this feature.
Topical information panels feature general reference articles alongside search results on topics prone to misinformation
Publisher funding
Since knowledge around funding sources can provide context when assessing an organisation's background and help you become a more informed viewer, we disclose government or public funding for news publishers via information panels alongside their videos. We provide information panels on publisher funding on more than a thousand channels.
*Feature availability varies by country and we are working to expand to more countries.
Publisher funding information panels show government or public funding for news publishers
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Health
For searches related to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), you may see an information panels that shows health information from health.gov.au. The information panel includes independent third-party information, such as symptoms, treatment and prevention. You can also go to the third party's website to learn more. We'll be rolling this out to more health topics in the future. As we also want to prioritise local sources, users may see an information panel providing topical context for COVID-19 with a link to a local health organisation, as well as this health panel featuring more text-based information.
*Feature availability varies by country and we are working to expand to more countries.
Health information panels show detailed health information from authoritative sources, such as health.gov.au