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Google's Udi Manber - Search is a Hard Problem

Written by Sean Ammirati / June 21, 2007 3:40 PM / 10 Comments

Udi Manber, Google's VP of Engineering, gave a brief 15 minute presentation at Supernova today entitled Search is a Hard Problem. He explained that with an audience like Supernova, he imagines we understand to some extent how difficult a problem it is, but it's probably a harder problem then we even appreciate. He laid out three reasons why this is the case:

  • Scale and diversity are almost beyond comprehension
  • Expectations and needs will continue to grow
  • 20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before

I found the third point quite amazing. I would think with the number of queries that Google processes, they would have seen a much higher percentage of the queries before.

A Deeper Understanding

Next Udi explained that there are three levels involved in trying to deliver relevant information back to users:

  • Users and Queries
  • Models
  • Languages

Users and Queries

Udi gave some examples of Google's ability to understand the different between two very similar queries. For example, Google understands that 'GM' stands for 'General Motors', while 'GM foods' is actually 'genetically modified.' If you search for 'B&B AB', Google knows that is 'bed and breakfast in Alberta', while 'Ramstein AB' is 'Ramstein Airbase'.

Google also will recommend queries that may deliver better results. For example, if you query 'Types of dogs' it will give results, but also suggests 'breeds of dogs' as a better search.

He then explained that they still can't find all the answers. As a fun example, he said the query "Why Search is Hard" is actually a very difficult query for Google to parse.

Models

Next Udi reviewed some new Google search functionality, which while not live yet - will be soon. Apparently, Google is going to start trying additional queries based on certain user queries. For example, the query "How much does it cost for an exhaust system" will pull up results from "cost of an exhaust system." Beyond just removing certain general words, they are also interpreting the question as part of the model; for example the following two queries:

  • ‘overhead view of bellagio pool' to 'bellagio pool pictures'
  • ‘fedora 5 losing network connections' to 'fedora 5 network configuration’

Different Queries for Different Locations

Finally, Udi talked about how results need to be different when the query is conducted in different locations. For example, the query 'government' needs to return results about your countries' government. I haven't tried this in other countries, but here in San Francisco the first result is for the US Government.

He also reviewed a tool at Google.com.eg, which actually takes a query in another language, translates it to english, runs the query, and then returns the results in that language. You can actually view the page in that language. There are a whole suite of language tools Google seems to be leveraging at: http://www.google.com/language_tools

I'm surprised there aren't more copyright issues here, but I'm not a lawyer. For an example, here is the Read/WriteWeb homepage translated into Arabic. Apparently, when Udi was demoing this for Larry Page, he asked why the images weren't translating. Obviously, there is still work to be done, but it is quite amazing.

Conclusion

After listening to Udi's talk, I must agree that while I thought search was complex, I probably underestimated some of the areas of real difficulty. It is amazing to step back and think about how conceptually complex this is. It sheds new light on many of our challenging experiences around the AltSearchEngine's Day without Google.


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» Searchology: No Magic Behind Google’s Magic from Internet Markets & Technologies

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» Google: 25% Of Queries Are New & Adding Question Engine from Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing

Google's Udi Manber - Search is a Hard Problem from Read/Write Web has an interesting write up on a presentation Udi Manber, Google's VP of Engineering, gave the other day at Supernova. In his presentation, he tried to explain why "search is a hard pro... Read More

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On Thursday at the Supernova conference, Udi Manber Google's VP of Engineering talked about what a difficult problem search is. This was followed up by Sheryl Sandberg, Google's Global VP of Sales and Operations, giving a presentation on What's next... Read More

» A Quarter of Google Searches Are Never Seen Before from Search Engine Roundtable

On Search Engine Land, Barry wrote about a Read/Write Web blog post that highlights a recent presentation by Google's VP of Engineering, Udi Manber. In the presentation, Manber says that of the 20-25% queries that Google sees today, we have... Read More

» one quarter of searches done on google are new from Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog

by: Lynette WebbI’ve put this in my own words, but the back-up for it comes from a speech that Udi Manber, Google's VP of Engineering, gave recently. You can see more about the speech here thanks to Sean www.readwriteweb.com/archives/udi_manb... Read More

Comments

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  • The 20-25% new queries stat, do you know if that is a percentage of total queries (that seems high, as you said) or as a percentage of the number of unique queries (i.e., 'football' searched 40,000 times counts as 1 query, the same as 'skippy peanut butter recipes with pictures' searched once is counted as a single query). The latter would be less shocking. :)

    Posted by: Josh Catone | June 21, 2007 3:56 PM


  • I'm based in Australia - Google's first result for me typing 'government' is www.australia.gov.au, the Australian government portal

    Posted by: Jacinta | June 21, 2007 5:48 PM


  • Josh,

    Good question. I'm not sure but I would imagine it is unique queries which makes much more sense. This also helps me reconcile some of the things Jason C has said about Mahalo regarding the 'head' of search.

    - Sean

    Posted by: Sean Ammirati | June 21, 2007 5:58 PM


  • Sean, This looks like a repeat of Udi's presentation during Google's universal search PR event a month or so back.

    Posted by: Manoj | June 21, 2007 6:22 PM


  • The Arabic translation looks neat. Were you able to find someone who understand Arabic to confirm its accuracy?

    Also, I can't imagine Google being able to translate images in a very long time (GIF and JPG images are pixels, and have no text values). Think about how long has it been brought up that FLASH SWF files was going to be indexed; and search results today of SWF files are close to nil.

    Posted by: Billy | June 21, 2007 8:35 PM


  • The gm cars vs. gm food is nothing more than a synonym look-up. See the gm vs. genetically modified search examples in this post http://stack-up.com/stack/2007/05/22/searchology-no-magic-behind-googles-magic/

    Posted by: Paul | June 21, 2007 11:13 PM


  • Re the automatic translation, you can also take an Arabic web page, e.g. from BBC's Arabic News Service and translate it into English. Makes it easier to assess than in the other direction ;-)

    Posted by: Oli | June 22, 2007 5:52 AM


  • GM food
    in GM food was served in paper plates..
    produced by GM food containers leaked..
    at GM food is the favorite pass-time..

    statistics/popularity does not always work! This is not understanding! From 1000s of employees, don't they have one linguist to correct these statements?

    Posted by: troma | June 22, 2007 5:30 PM


  • Good Article :)

    Posted by: kaz | June 24, 2007 1:15 PM


  • It is an interesting attempt to deliver better search results, however when Google tries to "guess" what you are searching for it will not deliver what you are actually searching for.

    Posted by: Zip Drugs legal discount online pharmacy | June 26, 2007 7:41 AM




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