Except for the An occasional cosmetic change to its homepage likely to give long-time users pause, Google Search is evolving without much notice. While Google claims that search is updated thousands of times a year to improve its results and user experience, these updates are invisible to the millions of searchers who perform billions of search queries per day in 150 LANGUAGES.
We asked Google to give us an overview of some of these changes and how they’re being implemented. As the holiday season approached, we became curious and also asked about Google Ads and Google Shopping. Here’s what some members of Google’s brain trust told us about how search and these other services continue to evolve out of sight.
How does Google decide what to change?
Even though the systems that decide what is relevant and reliable among the billions of web pages available are automated, deciding how these automated systems perform their functions requires a lot of effort on the part of many teams to fine-tune them. “Delivering great results at this type of scale and complexity requires many different systems, and we are always looking to improve those systems so we can display the most useful results possible,” says Danny Sullivan, Public Liaison Manager of Google for search.
Sullivan says changes to research go through a rigorous process before something new is implemented. In 2021, Google conducted more than 700,000 experiments that resulted in 4,000 search improvements. “The data from these assessments and experiments is subject to extensive review by experienced engineers and research analysts, as well as other legal and privacy experts, who then determine whether the change is approved for initiation,” Sullivan explains.
What’s next?
In addition to tweaks to Google’s search methodology, many of the changes to search aim to make it more contextual and allow users to search in what Sullivan describes as “more natural and intuitive” ways. . For example, he says, multi-search on Google’s mobile app lets users take a photo of something, add text to it, and search by image and text at the same time. Soon there will be “multisearch near me”, which will do the same thing but give local results; for example, you could take a photo of a type of sushi and Google would help you find a nearby restaurant that serves it.
Sullivan says Google is also working to make certain types of searches, like exploring a new city, more visual, showcasing the work of content creators and the open web. This approach will also apply to a new feature that seeks first-hand advice from real people, such as those who create instructional videos. The feature, currently titled “discussions and forums” in Search, can also lead you to conversations in which your topic of interest is discussed by experts (or those who believe they are experts).
One development you may have noticed for a long time is that you get different search results on mobile than on desktop. On mobile, fast-loading content that displays well on a mobile screen tends to rank higher. “We will give preference to mobile-friendly content over other content, assuming all other things are equal,” says Sullivan. “We’ll also show you links that make sense for your device, like a link to the right app store.”
