Google is planning major changes to its search engine that will make it easier and faster for users to get the information they need, it has revealed.
The company, according to Google Fellow Amit Singhal, is working to give its search engine a better understanding of the words it’s searching. Google wants to do away with simply searching for word strings and coming out with Web site links, according Singhal.
Instead, Googlers want the new and improved search engine to give users facts and answers to their queries.
“Let me just say that every day, we’re improving our ability to give you the best answers to your questions as quickly as possible,” Singhal said in an emailed statement to Computerworld.
“But our ability to deliver this experience is a function of our understanding your question and also truly understanding all the data that’s out there. And right now, our understanding is pretty darn limited,” he added.
The issue is that a search engine needs to understand the words being queried. “Ask us for “the 10 deepest lakes in the U.S,” and we’ll give you decent results based on those keywords, but not necessarily because we understand what depth is or what a lake is,” Singhal said.
The company is taking baby steps in this direction, but there’s a long road ahead, he noted.
In 2010, Google bought Metaweb, a company whose free and open database called Freebase, a large collection of information on people, places and things, Google is using in this search project. The more words and phrases that Google’s search engine knows, the more easily it can find more precise query results, Singhal said.
Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, said if Google succeeds, it could be a huge change for the whole search field.
“Over time, this could significantly change the results that Google serves up in searches. By adding semantic algorithms to the process, the results should be more suited to answering the questions people are actually asking rather than just delivering key word matches,” he added.
The process should also reduce user frustration and “search fatigue,” Olds said. “Increasingly. when I use Google to search something, the top results don’t really tell me anything about what I’m looking for,” he said.
“If I’m looking to find out about, for example, an Intel processor speed, the top results might be, ‘Buy Intel here’ or prices. A better search would take me to an Intel specifications sheet or might even give me the speed of the processor right in the link summary,” he added.
The search overhaul would also be another hurdle for Microsoft Bing, Google’s biggest search competitor. While Bing has held steady in the search market, it hasn’t been able to make much headway against Google’s dominance.
“It does raise the bar for other search providers, particularly Microsoft’s Bing. This should help Google maintain its more-than-comfortable lead over Bing,” Olds said.
Last fall, Google updated its search algorithm, looking to make about 35% of its search results more timely.
