Google explains how it ranks pages

INTERNET SEARCH GIANT Google has explained how it ranks its search results after attracting increasing scrutiny from regulators.

Under the heading "This stuff is tough", Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow, attempted to counter allegations of anti-competitiveness by explaining how the firm's pagerank algorithms work, saying, "Welcome to the wild world of search at Google. More specifically, welcome to the world of ranking."

As an example of how fair this makes its search results, the firm recommends that you perform a query for "search engines". Should you try this you'll find that the top results vary between Dogpile and Alta Vista, however, Euro regulators might need a few more examples than this.

The firm is attempting to counter the recent anticompetition complaints levelled at it, and in a lengthy post, Singhal a twenty year veteran of the search industry, explained that Google's algorithms are not perfect, but they do work. "After nearly two decades, I've lost count of how many times I've been asked why Google chooses to generate its search results algorithmically. Here's how we see it: the web is built by people. You are the ones creating pages and linking to pages. We are utilising all this human contribution through our algorithms to order and rank our results. We think that's a much better solution than a hand-arranged one."

Singhal suggested that while other firms take a different approach, this too is imperfect, adding, "Other search engines approach this differently -- selecting some results one at a time, manually curating what you see on the page. We believe that approach which relies heavily on an individual's tastes and preferences just doesn't produce the quality and relevant ranking that our algorithms do. And given the hundreds of millions of queries we have to handle every day, it wouldn't be feasible to handle each by hand anyway".

Google tinkers with its algorithms every day, according to the post, and uses many different 'signals' to create its search results. "There's a ton that goes into building a state-of-the-art ranking system like ours. Our algorithms use hundreds of different signals to pick the top results for any given query. Signals are indicators of relevance, and they include items as simple as the words on a webpage or more complex calculations such as the authoritativeness of other sites linking to any given page," said Singhal. "Those signals and our algorithms are in constant flux, and are constantly being improved. On average, we make one or two changes to them every day".

"Ultimately, search is nowhere near a solved problem. Although I've been at this for almost two decades now, I'd still guess that search isn't quite out of its infancy yet. The science is probably just about at the point where we're crawling. Soon we'll walk. I hope that in my lifetime, I'll see search enter its adolescence."

Happy now, Europe? µ