Every now and then I get reminded why Google are so successful at what they do – and I am not talking about advertising now. Their search algorithm is brilliantly complicated, and is the number one choice for web searches. The best part of this algorithm is that is is almost always in a state of change, a flux if you will.
Google has put together this video to give us a first hand look at how quickly they make changes to how search queries are interpreted, and how these search results are tested. One very interesting example is how they changed their way of handling misspelled words – you might remember in the past misspelled words were searched as is, and then the user was just reminded that the word might be wrongly spelt. These days it automatically searches the correct spelling first, with an “escape hatch” to confirm the misspelled word. This is just one of the changes Google has made.
Take a look at the video – the part I like most is that the Google engineers still say they understand users have choice of what browser to use. Who would have thought Google employees still told themselves that… Refreshing.
PS: That is a lot of Apple Macs in a Google meeting room...
