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:
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.
