Google Reveals Major Update to Search Algorithm

One day before celebrating the company's 15th birthday, Google went back to the place where it all started — literally.

Inside the garage that housed Larry Page and Sergey Brin when the world's largest search company was created, Google on Thursday announced a handful of new updates to the company's search offering, including a major update to Google's search algorithm that the company calls "Hummingbird." The new algorithm affects 90% of all searches, and has been in place for about a month, said Amit Singhal, senior VP at Google.

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The new algorithm is meant to keep up with longer, more advanced search queries that come through Google. Instead of simple keyword queries, Google is working to accommodate questions on par with what users might ask their friends off the Internet. (e.g. “Tell me about Impressionist artists.”)

Hummingbird is the company's most significant algorithm change since Google switched to "Caffeine" back in 2010, says Singhal.

Google also showed off more advanced voice queries, in which your computer or tablet will answer back to you. "Voice will be fundamental to building future interactions with the devices [we use]," says Singhal. Users can ask Google to compare two items, generate a list of songs from a particular artist, or pull statistics about the Eiffel Tower and receive a voice response.

In the case of the Eiffel Tower, a user would need to say "Eiffel Tower" only once in a series of questions, and search will remember the context.

 

You should not be spending your time searching, you should be spending your time living," said Singhal.

Google also announced an updated version of the Google Search app on iOS, which is coming "soon," said Tamar Yehoshua, VP of search for Google. The new app will allow users to more clearly see their calendar or events cards from the app's home screen, and reminders will now carry over between iOS and Android devices.