Fact Check – The Claim Review Markup Structures Data

The Claim Review Markup structures data related to Fact Checks. The markup is implemented for web pages that review a claim made by others. Using the Markup displays a summarized version of your fact check over Google Search results when your page appears over search results for that claim.

PRO TIP 👨🏻‍🏫 : Make use of the Fact Check tool, if you do not want to add Structured Data Manually.

Pro TIP 👨🏻‍🏫 : Please refer to the previous posts of the series to know How To Add Structured Data In Detail.

A. What Are The Guidelines To Follow? 👇

1. Your website must mark up all pages containing claims with the ClaimReview structured data.
2.  Ensure to Follow all Structured data and Webmaster Guidelines properly.
3. Make sure that there is no mismatch of structured data and page content. If the structured data is indicating that the claim is true then even the content on the page should indicate the claim to be true and not false. The content and structured data should match.
4. You must abide by the various standards, accountability, readability, transparency, and site misinterpretation laid down by Google News General Guidelines.
5.  You must have various policies like correction policies or mechanisms for reporting errors.
6. Politically Entity related Websites like campaign websites, political party websites are not eligible for the Claim Review feature.
7. The readers have to understand the various claims made and what was checked and the said conclusions of the facts.
8. The claim that you are assessing must be distinct in origin (separate from your website). It can be another website, public statement, social media, etc.
9.  Your Fact Check Analysis must be transparent and traceable about sources and methods and must include citations and references to primary resources.

B. Technical Guidelines: 👇

1. A single page is eligible to hold multiple ClaimReview elements, each for a separate claim.
2. In case if several reviewers check the same fact, individual ClaimReview elements can be included for every reviewer’s analysis.
3. Host a specific Claim Review on only one page of the website. Avoid repeating the same fact check on multiple pages, in case they are variations of the same page.
4.  In case your website aggregates fact-check articles, make sure all the articles meet the above-stated requirements and all the fact checks are open and publicly available.

How Do I Post Multiple Fact Checks On A Page? Doing So, Follow One Of The Following Methods:

1. You can create a summary page having multiple summarized fact checks, each fact checks to have its claiming review element. Always only the full-text version of each fact check on its page. Every ClamReview element on the summary page should point to its full-page version rather than to the summary page.
2. You can create a single page having multiple full-length reviews, each with an HTML anchor. Every ClaimReview element must point to the summary page HTML anchor.

What Are The Various Structured Data Types Used For Implementing Fact Checks?

The following three structured data types are required to implement fact checks

A. ClaimReview: Summary of the claim being evaluated. It should not be more than 75 characteristics to minimize wrapping when being displayed on mobile devices.

ReviewRating: The entity holds the said assessment of the claim. The entity can hold both numeric and textual assessments, however, textual is the only one shown in search results currently.

There must be a number or text rating system for all fact checks carrying numeric scores.

Example:

1 = “FALSE” 

2 = “FALSE”          And so on.

URL: The link to the pages hosting the full fact check article. Ensure that the fact check has an HTML anchor.

The URL domain must be similar to the domain or subdomain of the page hosting the ClaimReview element.

Author: The said publisher of the fact check or the claim. The author must be an organisation or person, having the following properties:

Name: The entity holds the name of the organisation or person who publishes the fact check

 URL: The said URL of the publisher of the fact check.

 DatePublished: The entity holds the date when the fact check was published.

ItemReviewed: The entity holds the object which describes the claim being reviewed.

PRO TIP 👨🏻‍🏫 : Google Search recommends CreativeWork as the ItemReviewed.

B. Claim:

The entity holds the said claim to be reviewed.

A. Appearance: The said link or inline links of a CreativeWork in which this claim appears.

B. Author: The author of the said claim not the author of the fact check. Do not include this authority property if the claim does not have an author. If the said property is added, then define the following entities:

1. Name: The said publisher of the claim. It can be a person or an organisation.
2. SameAs : The entity holds the information of the party making the claim, it can be an organisation or a person. The property is repeated when multiple persons report on the same claim. When multiple parties specifically make the same claim, the author property can be repeated.

The said URL can be:

1. The homepage of the said organisation that makes the claim.
2.  Another conclusive URL that provides information about the party which can be a person or organisation’s Wikipedia.

C. DatePublished : The date when the said claim was made or entered the public disclosure.

D. FirstAppearance : The said link or inline description of a CreativeWork in which the said claim first appears.

C. Rating:

AlternateName: The entity holds the true rating assigned to ClaimReview. It is a short word or phrase. Example: ‘True’ or ‘False’.

When using a long sentence, ensure that the beginning of the sentence states the meaning of the sentence is abbreviated to fit the display.

BestRating: For numeric ratings, it states the best value possible on the worst to best scale. It must be greater than the worst rating and evaluated as a number.

Name: Similar to an alternative name and used when the alternative name is not provided. It is recommended to specify an alternate name instead.

Rating Value: The rating value of the claim. It is in the numeric form. It is the best rating-worst rating inclusive. Although integer values are included they are not required. The closer is the numeric rating to the best rating, the more true it is and vice versa. 

It is evaluated as a number.

WorstRating: The worst possible for numeric ratings on a scale from worst to best. It must be lesser than BestRating and should be evaluated as a number.

PRO TIP 👨🏻‍🏫: For Knowing How To Monitor Search Results with Search console and Fix Troubleshooting problems please refer to the previous posts of the series.