Google turned 15

Introducing ‘Hummingbird’-the New Search Formula

TechnoparkToday.com>> Sep 27, 2013:  Google, the search engine giant, which is a part of our day to day life, turns 15-year-old today.   Google announced some updates on its birthday.

The overall look has been updated and borrows the “card” look from Google Now, lumping relevant information into rectangles and carousels and placing it above any links to websites.

Answers will now be “richer” and include comparisons, filters and sorting. For example, if you ask Google to compare two foods, it will return a chart of their nutritional values. There are new results for song and music searches, and push notifications will soon come to the Google iOS app.

In September 1998, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google in Susan Wojcicki’s home garage in Menlo Park.

Over the years, Google has launched various changes to the search engine to improve results.  It added spell check, grasped the concept of synonyms and rolled out auto-complete. In 2007, it moved on from just links and started including other types of relevant content such as images, news articles and maps as part of its “universal search.”

The company has updated its under-the-hood search algorithms to “Hummingbird,” which will affect 90% of searches worldwide. The changes will make a difference in how results are ranked.