The next time you search for a business online with Google, it might be a little easier to tell if what you’re seeing is a legitimate link.
Google is testing verified search results for businesses in Search. When you search for a certain company, you might see a blue checkmark beside some results, meaning an authentic link to that company’s site.
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The goal is to ensure users end up at the site they intended to search, hopefully avoiding nefarious actors that take advantage of misspellings or copycat sites. This appears to be a follow-up to last year’s addition of blue verified check marks for Gmail senders.
The experiment isn’t being widely rolled out at the moment, as it wasn’t available when I logged in to my Google account, but I did see it when I tried the search in incognito mode. I saw the blue checkmark on a variety of sites, including technology and electronics, luxury clothing, and vehicles. Just searching for brands that came to mind, I saw verified marks for Meta, Nike, Amazon, Apple, Samsung, Nordstrom, Prada, Audi, and more.
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Verified search results didn’t appear to be available for more local or smaller businesses. It wasn’t available for major restaurants either. The focus seems to be on very large business websites where customers will most likely purchase something or submit sensitive information.
If you hover over the blue checkmark, you see a message explaining what it is. “This icon is being shown because Google’s signals suggest that this business is what it says it is.” Also, a warning appears stating, “Google can’t guarantee the reliability of this business or its products.”
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Google didn’t add how it assumes those links are safe but did tell The Verge that the process involves, at least in part, manual verification.
