Google set to overhaul search

Search engine giant Google is set to overhaul the way users consume information on their search engine by planning major changes, reports The Inquirer.

Google will start adding facts and direct answers to its pages in a bid to directly answer user queries. In addition, the firm wants to "do away" with searching for word strings and coming out with web links.

Amit Sanghal, a Google software engineer cited by PC World, used the example of a user searching for the 10 deepest lakes in the US. He believes the search engine will bring back "decent" results based on those keywords, but that is because Google doesn't necessarily understand what depth is or what a lake is.

Online marketing professionals should note that Google will not change the way it ranks and rates web sites, but it will "gradually" add more relevant content to its results.

Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, commented on the changes: "Over time, this could significantly change the results that Google serves up in searches. By adding semantic algorithms to the process, the results should be more suited to answering the questions people are actually asking rather than just delivering key word matches.

"It does raise the bar for other search providers, particularly Microsoft's Bing. This should help Google maintain its more-than-comfortable lead over Bing, he added.