Survivor sue Kim Davis rumour goes viral, thanks to Google

A rumour claiming band Survivor are suing Kim Davis and Mike Huckabee for $1.2 million over the unauthorised use of their “Eye of the Tiger” song is going viral, and that is partly thanks to Google listing a known fake news website in their “In the News” section.

Fake news websites are everywhere these days. Posting nonsensical, absurd yet just-believable-enough articles posing as entertainment or – even less realistically – satire.

So much so we launched our sister site ThatsFake.com that deals with them specifically.

And it doesn’t help us debunk all of this nonsense when Google are going to list these fake news websites at the top of their search results under the “In the News” section. Which is exactly what has happened in this case.

See the below screenshot, that shows what comes up when a user types in the phrase “Survivor sue Kim Davis” which incidentally is a rumour started by such fake news website posing as NBC. (In reality, no lawsuit has been filed at the time of writing this article.)

The third result appears to come from NBC, fueling the rumour. Given that in today’s world of instant news, many rarely venture past the headline. Given that fact, seeing the headline appear on Google confirming that Survivor are indeed suing Davis for $1.2 million, coupled with the NBC title, this is often enough to justify spreading the false rumour.

We used Google on machines in the UK, USA and Canada. The fake NBC appeared on all three.

Sponsored Content. Continued below...

Those who clicked the link to investigate with a more critical mind would have soon realised the site was NBC.com.co, a website that has nothing to do with NBC, and prints nonsense news, all of the time.

And so spreads the Kim Davis being sued by Survivor rumour, gaining traction across social media. To confirm what our sister site ThatsFake.com has already stated, there has been no lawsuit filed, and the $1.2 million figure appears to have been made up. We’ll update the article if any updates come to light.

Silly Google.