[May 15, 2012] In search of excellence Tweet May 16, 2012 (Bangkok Post - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Getting ready for the Lady Gaga concert late this month? Check out the new Google Search Plus Your World and you'll be surprised at how many in your "circles" you will meet and probably hang out with later that night. "Googling" has been part of the lingo for years concerning information searches. The US-based search-engine giant has a 99% share of Thailand's search market and 91% worldwide, according to data from StatCounter. To the dismay of rivals, including Microsoft's Bing, Google has been taking steps to ensure fresher, more relevant searches by tweaking its algorithm update system. Google claims to process more than 1 billion queries each day, taking about a quarter of a second to respond to each query. Since 2003, it has answered 450 billion new unique queries, or searches it has never seen before. It indexes billions of web pages with more than 100 million gigabytes of data and used more than 200 signals or factors to calculate, process and rank a search result. On average, every query has to travel 2,400 kilometres to get the answer back to the user. Its instant preview feature, which shows the snapshot of a search result when the user hovers the cursor over the double arrow next to it, loads in one tenth of a second, the average speed of the blink of an eye. But despite its formidable domination in ad-tied data searching, which has turned it into a $196.91-billion company, Google is determined to do more. Engineering director Scott Huffman said Google had made a significant change to its search algorithm to help improve both freshness and relevance of search results. For instance, if you type Olympic into the Google search box, you will get freshest results about the upcoming London Games, not the 1984 Olympics. Mr Huffman said Google's algorithm changes could affect 35% of search results. It would also provide better rankings for high-quality sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, and thoughtful analysis. Up until now, people went out of their ways to manipulate and trick search engines into giving their pages higher rankings. Among these search engine optimisation methods is keyword-stuffing technique. "This method is completely outdated and adds no value to rankings. We no longer give good rankings to pages employing this technique," he said. Mr Huffman said Google ran more than 58,000 experiments to evaluate its search result in 2011. But he acknowledged that the search engine needs to be improved constantly as each day there are 16-20% of search queries that the system has never seen before. He added that the greater adoption of mobile devices has driven searching traffic via mobile devices to grow at a faster rate than on desktop computers. But many website owners are not aware of the need to modify or optimise their content and pages for better display on small mobile screens. According to Google statistics, only one-third of global websites are optimised for mobile device displays. "The more optimisation of content and layout for displaying on mobile devices, the longer users will spend at these websites," he said. Mr Huffman said Google found that mobile users search for data the same way they do on desktop PCs. Mobile users also use it for complex tasks such as buying real estate, planning for vacations or searching for scientific documents. The popularity of social networking also made search experience more "tailor-fit and personalised". Google is offering Search Plus Your World for the users of Google+, its answer to Facebook. Google Search Plus integrates social searching to personalise results. With Google Search Plus, users can see regular search results, along with all sorts of results tailored to them _ pages shared with them by their Google+ friends and posts by people they know and content that is visible only to them. In the near future, users could use voice command in their native tongues to search stuff, instead of typing search strings, Mr Huffman said. For website owners, Google has four tips on how to create quality content to ensure a high ranking. First, any web page should be designed primarily for users, not for search engines. Second, website owners should also avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Third, don't participate in link schemes designed to increase web site's ranking or PageRank. And especially, do avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighbourhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links. Finally, don't use unauthorised computer programs to submit pages or check rankings. Such programs consume computing resources and violate Google's terms of service. ___ (c)2012 the Bangkok Post (Bangkok, Thailand) Visit the Bangkok Post (Bangkok, Thailand) at www.bangkokpost.com Distributed by MCT Information Services [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]