Thursday, May 17, 2012

Google's Makeover: What This Means for Search Engines


The Internet houses the information of the world, while search engines provide Internet users with access to information on the web. With so many search engines available, it has become vital for companies to introduce new and exciting advances when it comes to their search engine. Google, the leading search engine, has transformed their search engine with the hopes of maintaining their success.
In a recent Huffington Post article, Bianca Bosker examines Google’s new advancement, the ‘Google Knowledge Graph,’ and what it means to how search engines work. When a user places a topic in Google’s search engine, he or she receives links to websites that discuss the topic at hand, as well as a brief summary about their topic on the left hand side of the results. This brief summary about the topic consists of information that is key to the topic; in addition, this summary will hopefully provide a user with a piece of information they didn’t know they wanted or needed until it came up in the graph. The Google Knowledge Graph hopes to link up information that doesn’t appear related, but in fact is.

This is the next step when it comes to the expansion of search engines. In the future, not only will search engines provide users with access to information, but will help them connect seemingly separate bits of information together; allowing users to expand their knowledge on a given topic.  Because of the advancement made by Google, it is obvious that very soon all search engines will be following Google’s lead and developing a new search engine that links up facts with the hope of guiding users towards new knowledge and understanding of a particular topic. 




1 comment:

  1. This is a very interesting posting about Google's work on smarter searching. Could you actually provide an in-depth review of the Knowledge Graph with your own examples or commentary? It might also be interesting to see some more connections between online research and advanced search engines and the consumption of digital news. Does this present a potential challenge to the current news feed model?

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