*This post was updated on October 15th, 2019.
These days there’s a lot of talk about fake news and those who work in the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are at the forefront of helping determine which content is relevant to search engine users. Phil Cannella and his company, Crash Proof Retirement, have spent nearly two decades working tirelessly to help retirees separate good information from fake news when it comes to getting educated about retirement. If you think it’s only natural that Phillip Cannella would be interested using SEO to spread his message, you’re absolutely right. That’s why Phil Cannella has teamed up with one local SEO Company, SEO Locale in Jenkintown, PA to find out how search engine algorithms can unintentionally help spread fake news to retirees.
SEO Locale CEO Marc Brookland recently sat down with Phil Cannella to talk about search engine algorithms and how they can do a better job of ensuring the information they spread is accurate.
“Since fake news became a household term during the 2016 election, search engines like Google and Bing have stepped up their game to prevent false stories from appearing at the top of their search results pages. Unfortunately, there have been plenty of instances where their efforts have failed, allowing fake news to go viral, potentially influencing the way people view the world around them,” says Brookland.
Beware of Fake News From Phil Cannella
Phil Cannella has been dealing with similar issues during his entire career in the retirement planning industry. He’s seen the damage fake news can do, and how it can absolutely devastate people’s retirement accounts.
“We saw a lot of fake news about certain types of retirement investments in the years following the 2008 market crash. Not only were retirement advisors spreading false information to their clients about these investments, but search engines were also allowing articles containing fake news about retirement investing sail right to the top of their search engine results,” says Phillip Cannella.
“When the bottom fell out of the market in 2008, many retirees lost everything they worked for their entire careers, losing their homes, retirement accounts, and more,” continues Phil Cannella, “Ever since then, I’ve felt a personal responsibility to promote a sense of responsibility, not just in the financial planning industry, but in the search engine and SEO industries as well.”
So how can search engines help in the fight against fake news? Both Brookland and Phil Cannella agree that the key is taking a more hands-on approach to verifying the authenticity of web content.
“At the moment, search engines use complex algorithms to verify web content. While these can be powerful tools that save thousands of hours of work, they’re also fairly easy to fool,” says Brookland.
“Viral videos and other content can be even harder to verify, especially when posted anonymously, because they spread so quickly that by the time we realize they’re fake, they’ve already been seen by tens of millions of people,” adds Phil Cannella.
Fighting Fake News with Phil Cannella & SEO Locale
While search engines are taking efforts to stop the flow of fake news, Phillip Cannella and others are concerned that the problem may be beyond their ability to control. Phil Cannella hopes to be your ally in this ongoing fight, so don’t forget to check back with our blog every month to find out more about search engines and fakes news, including:
- How Google is looking to algorithmically promote factually accurate content in its search results.
- How Google is training its computer programs to find and weed out fake news via a new update.
- How review sites like Yelp and Ripoff Report can help spread fake news about local businesses.
- How you can identify fake news when it gets through to your search results.
Phil Cannella developed the Crash Proof Retirement System to protect retirees from losing their hard-earned retirement savings to the fees, volatility and corruption of Wall Street that has been making retirement an unnecessary struggle in America for decades. You can visit Phil Cannella’s official biography page or you can learn more about Crash Proof Retirement and Phil Cannella at CrashProofRetirement.com. View Phil Cannella’s biography on ethics.net.
Update: 10/15/2019 – Phil’s bio site was recently updated and plans on posting blogs each week about the financial industry. We had a quick moment to speak to Phil Cannella himself and he is currently re-working on a few items to help fight the fake news out there.
