Hey, Google Search. You doin’ alright, bud? Lately you’ve been having a rough time, what with all those scams showing up in search results and your new AI buddy Gemini telling people to use glue as a pizza topping. Is that why you’re testing out those familiar-looking blue check marks next to verified URLs in your search result pages?
The Verge spotted verification badges next to some well-known company names in Google search results that led right to their relevant websites. Amazon, Apple, Epic Games, HP, Meta, and Microsoft were among the examples seen, though the badges aren’t showing up for everyone — not even the same person logged into different accounts.
“This icon is being shown because Google’s signals suggest that this business is the business that it says it is,” says the pop-up message for the badge (unhelpfully omitting a link to the definition of tautology on Wiktionary). It finishes in a bit of CYA legalese: “Google can’t guarantee the reliability of this business or its products.”
As an adoption …