MENLO PARK, Calif. — Google unveiled a big revamp of its search
engine Thursday that affects 90% of the search results served up
worldwide by the Internet giant.
Called Hummingbird internally,
the change to Google's main search algorithm kicked in about a month
ago, but was not disclosed by Google until Thursday at an event in
Silicon Valley marking the company's 15-year anniversary.
"It is really big," said Google search executive Amit Singhal.
The
new algorithm makes search results more relevant and useful, especially
when users ask more complex questions — something that has been
happening a lot more in recent years, Singhal explained.
Google
unveiled the change at the old Menlo Park, Calif., house of Susan
Wojcicki, senior vice president of Google advertising. Google started in
1998 in Wojcicki's garage. The company opened the space for reporters
to announce its latest search efforts.
"We think about having 100 years to create the most amazing search opportunity. So we are 15 years in," Wojcicki said Thursday.
Google
dominates the multibillion-dollar Web search business, so any changes
it makes to search are closely watched, especially by those in the
Internet and advertising industries.
"Industries hold their breath
whenever something like this happens because it changes the way search
results appear," said Sameet Sinha, an analyst at B. Riley & Co.
"Google is such a significant part of traffic to most websites, so any
change in algorithms is extremely important."
Companies including
Demand Media, TripAdvisor, Bankrate.com, Yelp and WebMD get a lot of
their Web traffic from Google search results and some of these companies
have been hit by changes in the company's algorithms in the past, Sinha
noted.
On Thursday, Google search executive Tamar Yehoshua showed
off new voice-based queries by asking for a comparison of the
nutritional benefits of olive oil compared with coconut oil. Google's
new search algorithm returned a result dominated by a long list of
information comparing the two oils — all compiled by Google and shown on
Google's own website.
"If I get the information first on Google,
maybe I don't click through to WebMD anymore," Sinha said. "There will
definitely be some boats that will be rocked by this."
Google
revolutionized search by developing the PageRank system for ranking the
world's Web pages based on relevance, using an algorithm that tracked
how many times those pages are referenced by other pages. In 2010,
Google completely changed the system through an upgrade called Caffeine —
and now the company has rebuilt it again with Hummingbird.
The
change comes as people become more comfortable asking long, complex
questions when they use Google to search the Web, rather than single
words or simple phrases, Singhal explained in an interview with USA
TODAY.
Google is also making the change to ensure its search
results work well with voice-based queries. When people speak, rather
than type on a computer, they use more complex phrases and Google had to
update its algorithm to handle that, Singhal said.
Voice-based
search is becoming more important as people use smartphones more to find
information, Singhal and other Google executives said Thursday.
Ben
Gomes, a top Google engineer originally from India, said that Google's
voice-recognition technology used to have trouble handling his mix of
Indian and American accents. But now, he said, the technology picks up
his speech accurately.
"Today, voice search is actually working," Singhal added.
sumber : http://www.usatoday.com
