The company is responding to the increasing use of Twitter and Facebook as a source of breaking news. It says that around 35 per cent of searches will be affected, and results will now include pages that are just minutes old if the company’s algorithm detects that the most recent information is the most relevant.
Writing on the Google Search Blog, the company’s Amit Singhal said that “Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.”
The aim is to return information about what users are actually searching for, rather than necessarily what they have typed in. Singhal writes that “For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events, you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.”
He added that searches for reviews and regular events will now also preference the latest information.
The update complements Google’s ‘Caffeine web indexing system’, which was completed last year and allows the website to crawl the web more quickly and on a wider scale.
Writing on the Google Search Blog, the company’s Amit Singhal said that “Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.”
The aim is to return information about what users are actually searching for, rather than necessarily what they have typed in. Singhal writes that “For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events, you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.”
He added that searches for reviews and regular events will now also preference the latest information.
The update complements Google’s ‘Caffeine web indexing system’, which was completed last year and allows the website to crawl the web more quickly and on a wider scale.
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