Google Discover launched in December 2016 and received a major update in July 2017. Such snippets include additional details about results, such as displaying reviews for restaurants and social media accounts for individuals. On March 20th, it was confirmed that the roll out of the spam update was complete. Wired withdrew Megan Gray’s piece after Google complained about alleged inaccuracies, while the author reiterated that «As stated in court, “A goal of Project Mercury was to increase commercial queries”». The upgrade marked the most significant change to Google search in years, with more “human” search interactions and a much heavier focus on conversation and meaning. “Hummingbird” places greater emphasis on natural language queries, considering context and meaning over individual keywords.
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- Both Apple and Google have argued that disclosing the specific terms of their search default agreement would harm their competitive positions.
- Gmail, for example, is a webmail application, but still includes search features; Google Browser Sync does not offer any search facilities, although it aims to organize your browsing time.
- The service evolved from Google Video, Google’s discontinued video hosting service that also allowed to search the web for video clips.
- In 2011, Google introduced “Google Voice Search” to search for spoken, rather than typed, words.
- Google Search (also known simply as Google or google.com) is a search engine operated by Google.
Additionally, Google indexes some file types, being able to show users PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, certain Flash multimedia content, and plain text files. Google said that the feature “helps people find information faster by showing a visual preview of each result.” The snapshots of web pages are stored on Google’s servers. Clicking on the magnifying glass beside the search-result links will show a screenshot of the web page and highlight the image’s relevant text. So, for example, if the results for a particular query seem pornographic, our algorithms may remove that query from Autocomplete, even if the query itself wouldn’t otherwise violate our policies. Our algorithms look not only at specific words, but compound queries based on those words, and across all languages. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land that “Removing features is always tough, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users. Unfortunately, this feature never saw much pick up”.
Possible misuse of search results
For approximately 40 minutes on January 31, 2009, all search results were mistakenly classified as malware and could therefore not be clicked; instead a warning message was displayed and the user was required to enter the requested URL manually. Investigators can request Google to disclose everyone who searched a keyword or query or every phone in a particular place at a certain time. Clicking on the Doodle links to a string of Google search results about the topic. Gmail, for example, is a webmail application, but still includes search features; Google Browser Sync does not offer any search facilities, although it aims to organize your browsing time. In addition to its tool for searching web pages, Google also provides services for searching images (Google Images), Usenet newsgroups, news websites, videos (Google Videos), searching by locality, maps, and items for sale online.
Because Google is the most popular search engine, many webmasters attempt to influence their website’s Google rankings. The algorithm computes a recursive score for pages, based on the weighted sum of other pages linking to them. The PageRank algorithm instead analyzes human-generated links assuming that web pages linked from many important pages are also important. When Google was a Stanford research project, it was nicknamed BackRub because the technology checks backlinks to determine a site’s importance. Google’s rise was largely due to a patented algorithm called PageRank which helps rank web pages that match a given search string. Businesses who fail to update their websites accordingly could see a dip in their regular websites traffic.
Besides the main text-based search-engine function of Google search, it also offers multiple quick, interactive features. A Google blog post about designing “India-first” products and features explains that it is “tailor-made for the millions of people in India and Indonesia coming online for the first time”. On December 15, 2016, Google rolled out a new desktop search interface that mimics their modular mobile user interface.
- Universal search, however, incorporates a wide variety of sources, including websites, news, pictures, maps, blogs, videos, and more, all shown on the same search results page.
- “Instant previews” allowed previewing screenshots of search results’ web pages without having to open them.
- Google Search uses algorithms to analyze and rank websites based on their relevance to the search query.
- On October 28, 2024, AI Overviews was rolled out to 100 more countries, including Australia and New Zealand.
- “Hummingbird” places greater emphasis on natural language queries, considering context and meaning over individual keywords.
Google Discover, previously known as Google Feed, is a personalized stream of articles, videos, and other news-related content. The primary objective of the Google Knowledge Panel is to provide users with immediate, factual answers, reducing the need for extensive navigation across multiple web pages. The content within a Knowledge Panel is derived from various sources, including Wikipedia and other structured databases, ensuring that the information displayed is both accurate and contextually relevant. The information is often used as a spoken answer in Google Assistant and Google Home searches. The information covered by the Knowledge Graph grew significantly after launch, tripling its original size within seven months, and being able to answer “roughly one-third” of the 100 billion monthly searches Google processed in May 2016. Knowledge Graph boxes were added to Google’s search engine in May 2012, starting in the United States, with international expansion by the end of the year.
The new labels, highlighted in yellow color, and aligned to the left of each sponsored link help users differentiate between organic and sponsored results. In November 2013, Google started testing yellow labels for advertisements displayed in search results, to improve user experience. In March 2025, Google introduced an experimental “AI Mode” within its Search platform, enabling users to input complex, multi-part queries and receive comprehensive, AI-generated responses. These included results suggesting users add glue to pizza or eat rocks, or incorrectly claiming Barack Obama is Muslim. The feed contains a “mix of cards” which show topics of interest based on users’ interactions with Google, or topics they choose to follow directly. For instance, querying a well-known public figure may trigger a Knowledge Panel displaying essential details such as biographical information, birthdate, and links to social media profiles or official websites.
“Medic” search algorithm update
The mobile apps exclusively feature Google Discover and a “Collections” feature, in which the user can save for later perusal any type of search result like images, bookmarks or map locations into groups. Cards include, “links to news stories, YouTube videos, sports scores, recipes, and other content based on what Google determined you’re most likely to be interested in at that particular moment.” Users can also tell Google they’re not interested in certain topics to avoid seeing future updates. In May 2017, Google enabled a new “Personal” tab in Google Search, letting users search for content in their Google accounts’ various services, including email messages from Gmail and photos from Google Photos. Universal search, however, incorporates a wide variety of sources, including websites, news, pictures, maps, blogs, videos, and more, all shown on the same search results page. In March 2024, Google announced a significant update to its core search algorithm and spam targeting, which is expected to wipe out 40 percent of all spam results.
When it was announced in May 2024, Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance was quoted as saying “This will be catastrophic to our traffic, as marketed by Google to further satisfy user queries, leaving even less incentive to click through so that we can monetize our content.” This feature leverages data from Google’s Knowledge Graph, a database that organizes and interconnects information about entities, enhancing the retrieval and presentation of relevant content to users. A Google Knowledge Panel is a feature integrated into Google search engine result pages, designed to present a structured overview of entities such as individuals, organizations, locations, or objects directly within the search interface. The Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base used by Google to enhance its search engine’s results with information gathered from a variety of sources. The move was interpreted in some quarters as a response to Microsoft’s recent release of an upgraded version of its own search service, renamed Bing, as well as the launch of Wolfram Alpha, a new search engine based on “computational knowledge”. In October 2016, Gary Illyes, a webmaster trends analyst with Google, announced that the search engine would be making a separate, primary web index dedicated for mobile devices, with a secondary, less up-to-date index for desktop use.
Ranking of results
On September 10, 2024, the European-based EU Court of Justice found that Google held an illegal monopoly with the way the company showed favoritism to its shopping search, and could not avoid paying €2.4 billion. In 2023, drawing on internal Google documents disclosed as irwin casino part of the United States v. Google LLC (2020) antitrust case, technology reporters claimed that Google Search was “bloated and overmonetized” and that the “semantic matching” of search queries put advertising profits before quality. Google Search Console helps to check for websites that use duplicate or copyright content. This field, called search engine optimization, attempts to discern patterns in search engine listings, and then develop a methodology for improving rankings to draw more searchers to their clients’ sites.
The encrypted search was accessed at encrypted.google.com However, the web search is encrypted via Transport Layer Security (TLS) by default today, thus every search request should be automatically encrypted if TLS is supported by the web browser. “Instant previews” allowed previewing screenshots of search results’ web pages without having to open them. We will continue to work to improve our approach to removals in Autocomplete, and are listening carefully to feedback from our users.
Search syntax
The new architecture provided no visual differences in the user interface, but added significant speed improvements and a new “under-the-hood” indexing infrastructure. In August 2009, Google invited web developers to test a new search architecture, codenamed “Caffeine”, and give their feedback. In December 2017, Google began rolling out the change, having already done so for multiple websites. In 2012, Google changed its search indexing tools to demote sites that had been accused of piracy. Despite Google search’s immense index, sources generally assume that Google is only indexing less than 5% of the total Internet, with the rest belonging to the deep web, inaccessible through its search tools.
They also searched for “three Asian teenagers”, and very revealing photos of Asian girls and women appeared. Both Apple and Google have argued that disclosing the specific terms of their search default agreement would harm their competitive positions. A 2019 New York Times article on Google Search showed that images of child sexual abuse had been found on Google and that the company had been reluctant at times to remove them. In 2003, The New York Times complained about Google’s indexing, claiming that Google’s caching of content on its site infringed its copyright for the content. In 2023, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld the use of search history requests to identify suspects in a 2020 arson, later stating that it is not a “broad proclamation” and noted that the warrant did not have an individualized probable cause. Some Google Doodles have interactivity beyond a simple search, such as the famous “Google Pac-Man” version that appeared on May 21, 2010.
It has also been criticized for condensing information from various sources, making it less likely for people to view full articles and websites. Scientific American has criticised the system on environmental grounds, as such a search uses 30 times more energy than a conventional one. Two weeks after the rollout of AI Overviews, Google made technical changes and scaled back the feature, pausing its use for some health-related queries and limiting its reliance on social media posts. At the 2023 Google I/O event in May, Google unveiled Search Generative Experience (SGE), an experimental feature in Google Search available through Google Labs which produces AI-generated summaries in response to search prompts. Another major update was released in September 2018, which renamed the app from Google Feed to Google Discover, updated the design, and adding more features.