Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine
By SAUL HANSELL
Published: June 3, 2007, New York Times

The final page of this new article on the Google mystique gives more info on how it does search. Considering that we teach users about the search engine based on how we think it works, it is kinda good to know about how things have evolved.

Google does more and more for you, as the user. It does a lot of work in order to do that:

"Mr. Singhal has developed a far more elaborate system for ranking pages, which involves more than 200 types of information, or what Google calls “signals.” PageRank is but one signal. Some signals are on Web pages — like words, links, images and so on. Some are drawn from the history of how pages have changed over time. Some signals are data patterns uncovered in the trillions of searches that Google has handled over the years."

And it's not really simple, either:

"... words that seem related sometimes are not related. “We know ‘bio’ is the same as ‘biography,’ ” Mr. Singhal says. “My grandmother says: ‘Oh, come on. Isn’t that obvious?’ It’s hard to explain to her that bio means the same as biography, but ‘apples’ doesn’t mean the same as ‘Apple.’ ”"

So what does this mean for the average user? It's good news! Even if you mess up, Google still tries to help you, and even more than before. However, that doesn't mean that you can't do better if you put in 'better' (more relevant) terms in the first place. A lot of the search principles - facet analysis, chasing down references, etc., still apply. And as always, it pays to notice what results your search terms are throwing up, and adjust accordingly.