Google Talks About Its Evolution and Future

Google is no stranger to putting out videos about search. They put out webmaster help videos all the time, but earlier this year, we got a rare look into the inside of how Google shapes its algorithms. There wasn’t a lot of groundbreaking information in that, but it was interesting to see nonetheless.

Here’s that video:

Similarly, while not a lot of new information is provided, Google has released a new video about the “evolution of search,” which is kind of a documentary-style six minute look at how Google has evolved over the years, as told by Googler like Amit Singhal, Marissa Mayer, Ben Gomes, Jack Menzel, and Johanna Wright.

Here’s the new one:

Google has also released an accompanying timeline:

Click to enlarge

The last part of the video is about “the future of search,” and that’s always a hot topic, given that Google controls such a dominant portion of the search market. Webmasters would do well to listen to what Google has to say about where search is going.

“The truth is that our users need much more complex answers,” says Singhal in the video. “My dream has always been to build the Star Trek computer, and in my ideal world, I would be able to walk up to a computer, and say, ‘Hey, what is the best time for me to sow seeds in India, given that monsoon was early this year?’ And once we can answer that question (which we don’t today), people will be looking for answers to even more complex questions. These are all genuine information needs. Genuine questions that if we – Google – can answer, our users will become more knowledgable and they will be more satisfied in their quest for knowledge.”

“Our goal is to get you to the answer you’re looking for faster and faster, creating a nearly seamless connection between your questions and the information you seek,” says Gomes on the Inside Search blog. “That means you don’t generally need to know about the latest search feature in order to take advantage of it— simply type into the box as usual and find the answers you’re looking for.”

Perhaps not a lot of takeaways you can go out and apply to your site right now, but it does give you an idea of the kind of search engine Google is striving to build, and the better you can solve real problems with your content, the more Google is bound to like that content. You can go back and look at Google’s list of questions for assessing quality, and get that much.

That’s ludicrous. Google’s idea is to make search better by not giving us options to make search better? Think about all the possibilities and give me what you think is best and let me refine or create filters to which all my searches forward are refined to my personal tastes. How stupid is it to say that Google wants search to be more personalized and then not let anybody personalize it or make it annoying to personalize it in such a way nobody will bother and then you can say, see we gave you options and you never used them. Because they’re not options you can set and forget. Like recently how Google introduced Verbatim search, but each fracken time you want to use it, you have to turn it on. How do I keep that turned on as a filter? How can I use say verbatim and see only blogs, or only news, or only [fill in the blank]????? Google to me is like walking into a department store and the store says, here’s a dress for you. How do they know my size, or even if I was buying it for myself? Just because I was looking for a dress in a size 6 does not mean I’m not a size 36, and a male. For which I am. That’s how I attribute this personalized approach that Google is doing. They already know they’re going to get it wrong most of the time, they hope to improve upon that, and we’re all guinea pigs in their experiment until it fails. Which it will. Google started to get it right pre Panda, but failed to see it was the options not the algorithms that made Google better than it currently was at the time. The tweak came from the individual who said, Hey Google I want to block this site from my search results. Why Couldn’t Google then allow us to further customize our search on our own? Google needs to take a page out of the shopping sites that let people refine their search for a product. For example, one little check mark and I won’t see any blog results, ok, one more and no more news results, maybe even take out any result that doesn’t have a PR 3 or higher, omit certain words out of my search that seem to come up on the junk sites. Ok, then I have my results refined for my tastes. If they truly want to end up like on Star Trek and have queries like they do, then they’ll have to see that the computer a lot of times asks for more information to complete the query before the computer spits up a result. Look at how image search has progressed. I can refine my search in a bunch of different ways making Google’s image search top notch. They just need to do that with regular search. Matt Cutts said he doesn’t want Google to have options all over the place, but then that means you’re trying to be the Honda of search and not become Rolls Royce of search. When you order a Rolls Royce you are given all these options to every little detail of the car. When you order a Honda, you maybe have half a dozen or so you need to choose. Is Honda really how Google sees their search engine as giving a person that personalized feeling over the experience of buying a Rolls Royce?

There are 3 Comments. Add Yours.

Steven
November 28, 2011 at 2:01 pm

That’s ludicrous. Google’s idea is to make search better by not giving us options to make search better? Think about all the possibilities and give me what you think is best and let me refine or create filters to which all my searches forward are refined to my personal tastes. How stupid is it to say that Google wants search to be more personalized and then not let anybody personalize it or make it annoying to personalize it in such a way nobody will bother and then you can say, see we gave you options and you never used them. Because they’re not options you can set and forget. Like recently how Google introduced Verbatim search, but each fracken time you want to use it, you have to turn it on. How do I keep that turned on as a filter? How can I use say verbatim and see only blogs, or only news, or only [fill in the blank]????? Google to me is like walking into a department store and the store says, here’s a dress for you. How do they know my size, or even if I was buying it for myself? Just because I was looking for a dress in a size 6 does not mean I’m not a size 36, and a male. For which I am. That’s how I attribute this personalized approach that Google is doing. They already know they’re going to get it wrong most of the time, they hope to improve upon that, and we’re all guinea pigs in their experiment until it fails. Which it will. Google started to get it right pre Panda, but failed to see it was the options not the algorithms that made Google better than it currently was at the time. The tweak came from the individual who said, Hey Google I want to block this site from my search results. Why Couldn’t Google then allow us to further customize our search on our own? Google needs to take a page out of the shopping sites that let people refine their search for a product. For example, one little check mark and I won’t see any blog results, ok, one more and no more news results, maybe even take out any result that doesn’t have a PR 3 or higher, omit certain words out of my search that seem to come up on the junk sites. Ok, then I have my results refined for my tastes. If they truly want to end up like on Star Trek and have queries like they do, then they’ll have to see that the computer a lot of times asks for more information to complete the query before the computer spits up a result. Look at how image search has progressed. I can refine my search in a bunch of different ways making Google’s image search top notch. They just need to do that with regular search. Matt Cutts said he doesn’t want Google to have options all over the place, but then that means you’re trying to be the Honda of search and not become Rolls Royce of search. When you order a Rolls Royce you are given all these options to every little detail of the car. When you order a Honda, you maybe have half a dozen or so you need to choose. Is Honda really how Google sees their search engine as giving a person that personalized feeling over the experience of buying a Rolls Royce?
gjv
November 28, 2011 at 3:24 pm

does anyone have thoughts about how this will, if at all, change the game for google?

i am excited that an open source approach may lead give us indexes to search against that are free from pollution from content farms and seo gamers. for some research tasks it would be worth it even if the service was slower by many factors.
Internet Marketing
November 29, 2011 at 4:26 am

I think Google is evolving their algorithm too much. If this going to continue, SEO, website owners, and webmaster will move to bing, yahoo, or local search engines.

Thanks,
WebTrooperz.