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Google Reveals It Made 4,500 Changes To Search Tool In 2020
By Mikelle Leow, 24 Aug 2021
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Image via chinthamb / Shutterstock.com
Google had spent the better part of the lockdown in 2020 on self-improvement, it seems. On Monday, the tech giant shared that it had made 4,500 “improvements” to the search tool last year alone.
The announcement was made in a new blog post about Google’s fully-redesigned ‘How Search Works’ portal, which outlines how its algorithm scours the web to give you the information you need “from the moment you start typing in the search bar to the moment you get your search results.”
The site “gives an overview of the technology and work that goes into organizing the world’s information, understanding what you’re looking for and then connecting you with the most relevant, helpful information,” Danny Sullivan, Google’s public liaison for Search explains.
2020 appears to be Search’s most productive year yet, with 4,500 updates made to the tool’s ranking system, user interface, and more. Search Engine Land notes that this is a steep contrast to 10 years before, when Google reported about one update to Search per day—which, if you think about it, is also pretty ambitious. The company has become far more goal-oriented through the years, jumping to about 3,200 improvements to Search in 2019.
Some of the tweaks and revamps from that year, as we reported in 2020, include a refresh to the desktop search results page design with noticeable domain names and brand icons, simplified Google Images cards, prompts for more refined queries, and even accessibility to 50 new AR animals.
Google says additions to Search are “rigorously tested” by thousands of highly-trained Search Quality Raters from around the world, who rely on a detailed set of publicly available guidelines for quality assurance.
[via Search Engine Land, cover image via chinthamb / Shutterstock.com]
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