Google has overhauled the way it serves up results in response to search queries.The update is designed to work out whether a person wants up-to-date results or historical data.
The US firm estimated the alterations to its core algorithm would make a difference to about 35% of searches. The changes try to make results more relevant and beef up features which Google believes set it apart from rivals and to offer a better guess of how “fresh” the results should be. The under-the-hood changes sought to understand whether a searcher wants results “from the last week, day or even minute”.
The update to improve the “freshness” of results builds on the big update made to the underlying infrastructure of Google’s core indexing system in August 2010 known as Caffeine. That change made it easier for Google to keep its index up to date and to add new sources of information. The last big update to the Google algorithm, known as Panda, affected only 12% of searches.