#searchupdates

Thanks to Joshua Berg for the share and Mark Traphagen for the +1, without that I'd never have seen this post. I think I came across this a year or so back and was amazed that Google implements 500+ changes to its algorithm each year. ▼ Reshared Post From Joshua Berg ▼ How does Google make improvements to its search algorithms? Here's some interesting insight into how that process comes about, how the experimenting & then the live testing is done. Amit Singhal  In a year we launched over 500 changes to our algorithm. So we change our algorithm almost twice a day.     Scott Huffman We really analyze each potential change very deeply to try to make sure that it's the right thing for users.      The process: The first step in improving Google Search is coming up with an idea.      Ranking engineers come up with a hypothesis about what data, what signal could we integrate into our algorithm.      We test all these reasonable ideas through rigorous scientific testing.      We show raters a side-by-side for queries that the engineer's experiment might be affecting.      We then confirm these changes with live experiments on real users in the Sandbox.      We send a small fraction of actual Google traffic to the Sandbox.      In 2010 we ran over 20,000 different experiments.      All the data are then rolled up by a Search Analyst.      We then have a launch decision meeting where the leadership of the search team the looks at that data and makes a decision.      Amit Singhal If our scientific testing says this is a good idea for Google users, we will launch it on Google. When you align Google's interest with user's interest as we have aligned, good things happen.      Mark Paskin We put a huge investment into understanding what works for users.     Amit Singhal: "Users keep coming back to Google even though they have a choice of a search engine every time they open a browser.      #GoogleSearch #SearchAlgorithm #SearchUpdates http://click-to-read-mo.re/p/3Qb6