Yesterday, Google published a new short video on how Google search works. This was on specifically how Google Search continues to improve results. Clearly this is in response to the US Congressional hearings from a few weeks ago. The video is super simplified but I think does a great job explaining what Google does to make changes to search to make it better.
Here are my notes from listening to the video:
- There is a lot of information on web
- Google's mission is to connect you to that information
- Google shows off autocomplete predictive searches (this touches on complaints from the hearing on showing predictions that some might disagree with)
- Google shows off featured snippets and how they have relevant information (this touches on complaints from the hearing on stealing content)
- Google also shows off knowledge panels for quick snapshot on people, places or things and relationships between them (this touches on complaints from the hearing same as featured snippets)
- Google said its goal is to get you the information right away
- Google said it's ranking system helps make sure the information is accurate
- Some of how it does this is from looking at keywords and how recent page was published (there is a lot more obviously)
- Google said it is not perfect
- But when it gets it wrong, Google cannot fix individual search results manually
- Google said they make search better by making improvements to the algorithms
- Google made 3,620 improvements to search in 2019
- Google updates its search policies as well and sometimes Google manually removes information from search features, like wrong information in knowledge panels
Here is the video:
Forum discussion at Twitter.
