Why Google search's overhaul will matter to businesses
Source: Emma Barnett
This week the engineers behind Google search, arguably the world’s most popular internet service, announced that the engine is to undergo its most radical makeover to date.
The overhaul will be gradually rolled out over the next few months, but its effects could be transformational, both for users and businesses.
Google is now going to start fusing semantic search technology with its classic keyword search system. In easy speak, this means that whenever users enter a certain type of query, Google will try to supply a single answer, rather than just spit out thousands of blue web links.
This step change really is the Holy Grail.
Google knows it has got to up its game if it is to keep being the undisputed leader in this space.
Last year I had the pleasure of interviewing Amit Singhal, the man who re-wrote the famous Google search algorithm, improving it so much on Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s original formula that Singhal’s code is still the one used today, 12 years on.
For his major contribution, effectively changing the way the world accesses information forever, Singhal is now known simply as a ‘Google Fellow’ - the equivalent of Jedi in Google terms and the highest honour in the Google-verse.
The search guru, who was Google employee number 167 (there are now more than 25,000 staff members around the world), is still obsessed by information retrieval �C the name by which search was known in academic circles until the advent of the internet in the late nineties.
However, Singhal was still frustrated with search last June.
“Search still feels very one dimensional,” he said. “You give us a query and we [Google] returns some results. It needs to be far more communicative. You need to be able to have a conversation with your search engine. I want my search engine to be the expert who knows me the best. It needs to know you so well that sometimes you don’t need to ask it the next question.”
That will sound ominous to plenty of people. Could an Orwellian, Big Brother-style menace be on the horizon, ushered in by this casually-dressed, laid-back scientist and his colleagues?
Singhal instantly offered assurances that Google, and all search engines, would need to be very respectful of users’ privacy when building and implementing new technologies.
However frightening the vision of a search engine which knows what a person wants to know before they do may seem, Singhal makes a convincing case for the transformative experience it will offer users. And as ever with these disruptive, innovative technology companies, they seem to be offering people a solution to a problem they don’t yet know they have.
This is important for business for one simple reason - intuitive, semantic search means that business will have to think harder about making their digital offerings more sophisticated. When there is only one answer to a search request, how do you make sure it is your business that is the one?
“I still waste a lot of time when I am searching. The conversation still feels broken. Search is not as efficient as I want it to be,” Singhal said when I met him.
“For instance, today I have a ‘to-do’ list on my phone which contains tasks like �C ‘pick up a gift for my father’. The phone has a GPS system and knows where I am. It also contains my calendar, so it knows when I am free.
“Why shouldn’t a search engine, which I have built a personalised relationship with, be able to sync up all that information and tell me when I am near a shop which has a gift in it that my dad would like at a time when I am free?”
At the time Singhal said Google and his team of engineers were not far off achieving this type of pre-emptive relationship with a search engine. This latest development towards definitive search is another step towards that future Singhal outlined.
Since the rise of Twitter and information updates in real-time, Google has been trying to update its core search service, to make it as relevant and timely to each user as possible.
However, despite having enjoyed a partnership with the micro-blogging site for two years it has failed to negotiate the same deal again. This has left Google without up-to-the-minute news in the body of its search results - beyond its Google News service.
By moving towards more computational search, in a similar vein to the lesser-known search engine, Wolfram Alpha, created by British scientist Stephen Wolfram, the new Google is likely to affect the millions of websites that rely upon its current page-ranking results.It is not yet clear how business will be affected �C which is why it is important to make sure your brand’s website has optimised itself with the best key words for search. Business owners will need to ensure that the web positioning of your company is answering the question your product is trying to solve.
Every business is supplying some kind of solution �C you just need to make sure your metadata, digital advertising and marketing strategies are all perfectly optimised for this brave new frontier of search.
It is not in Google or Microsoft Bing’s interests to transform the search experience so that it excludes businesses; in fact quite the opposite. But, as Google continues to drive the pace of innovation, it will be more and more important to keep your website up to date and in tune with the latest ethos of the web.
Google is about to undergo some its biggest changes since its inception. It’s like the Yellow Pages (albeit on a much larger scale) having a redesign and rewriting the index. Don’t miss out on taking up any opportunity the new index offers.
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