Google announced the release of the new search algorithm during its 15 year anniversary on Thursday at the old Menlo Park, Calif., house, where it all started out of the garage.

In a blog post it reads; Google Search is turning 15. Remember what it was like to search in 1998? You’d sit down and boot up your bulky computer, dial up on your squawky modem, type in some keywords, and get 10 blue links to websites that had those words. It seemed like magic (and it was way way faster than card catalogs and microfiche!).

The world has changed so much since then: billions of people have come online, the web has grown exponentially, and now you can ask any question on the powerful little device in your pocket. You can explore the world with the Knowledge Graph, ask questions aloud with voice search, and get info before you even need to ask with Google Now.



Information Week elaborates on the process by saying that Google updates its search algorithm frequently, on the order of several hundred times a year. The changes produced by most of these adjustments tend to be too subtle to notice.

But the company gives names to its major architectural updates, like Panda (February 2011), an effort to reduce the prominence of low-quality content in search results, and Caffeine (June 2010), a rewrite of the company's Web indexing system so that Google could provide faster search results.

The Hummingbird update expands Google's use of its Knowledge Graph, introduced last year as a way to help its search engine understand the relationships between concepts rather than simply matching keywords in documents. The Knowledge Graph structures data, so that a search for, say, Marie Curie, returns facts about her contributions to science, her life, her family and other related information, not all of which are necessarily contained in the same document.

Hummingbird expands Google's use of the Knowledge Graph so that its search engine can provide answers to queries that don't necessarily have simple answers. In the same blog post mentioned above, Amit Singhal, senior VP of Google Search, points to a search like "Tell me about Impressionist artists," which now returns a broad set of appropriate facts when submitted through a mobile device.

The Knowledge Graph also helps Google understand when a follow-up search makes reference to a previous search. For example, if you ask the Google Search app for "pictures of the Washington Monument" and then ask, "How tall is it?", Google will understand that you're referring to the Washington Monument instead of treating your query as a separate question.

You’ll also notice a new look and feel for Google Search and ads on your phones and tablets. It’s cleaner and simpler, optimized for touch, with results clustered on cards so you can focus on the answers you’re looking for.

Looking ahead, Google can be expected to continue pushing the development of predictive search (Google Now) and voice search, because typing on a mobile device is slow and often impractical.