Google Overhauls Search will be more personalized and more user-friendly



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Google polishes its search engine to favor more personalized results and more convincing images.

Leaders said Monday that the changes were due in part to the company's growing use of artificial intelligence technologies such as deep learning. Technology makes it possible to better determine the type of information related to a particular search, even if it is not obvious from the query used, and to perform tasks such as more accurate identification of cats in photos .

A new "Travel" feature allows you to track individual user searches on specific topics. People looking for "camping," for example, will be able to see their previous research on camping gear in a new "Collections" tool, said at a Nick Fox event, vice president of product and service. Google design for searches. in San Francisco. The idea is that people tend to repeatedly search for a particular topic instead of just looking for something once; This is essentially a better indexed version of the company's search history.

Users will be able to unsubscribe from the new feature if they do not want their search cataloged for them.

Google will also display more detailed information on specific topics at the top of the search query's main page. For example, users who search for "pugs" will see a list of topics like "health" or "where to adopt" that they can then click on to get more information. Meanwhile, users looking for "Yorkshire terrier" will see topics relevant to this breed, such as "how to groom" because this breed has a particularly long and wild fur.

The search giant also launches a new "Discover" tool that will appear on Google's main homepage on mobile browsers, said Shashidhar Thakur, vice president of Google's engineering for search . The "discover" feature works similarly to Facebook's news feed by presenting articles and videos to users based on what an algorithm identifies as most likely to interest them. This discovery tool could keep people stuck on Google's search engine if it shows users a wider variety of information they would not have asked for otherwise.

Google did not specify when or if Discover would be launched on desktop browsers.

The precautions taken by Google to ensure that the new Discover tool does not recommend users to click on the type of fake news and conspiracy theories that have affected Facebook's news feed is unclear. Of course, Google's search recommendations are not influenced by what friends or family members share, like Facebook's news feed, but are influenced by personal research.

Cathy Edwards, director of engineering at Google Images, also said Google Image Search had been updated to make it easier to access pages to buy products for which they were looking for images or to find other information helpful. Edwards said people looking for images of "swings" will now see pictures of swings from websites where they can buy one, see third-party tutorials on how to install a swing and see a link to photo sites. that's what they were looking for.

The change to Images search is similar to the recent changes on Instagram. It has been integrated with Facebook's Stories feature, which makes it easier to purchase products such as handbags from third-party retailers.

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Edwards also said Google would present its own version of Stories – text collage, short videos and photos that the Snap photo sharing service popularized and that many companies like Facebook have imitated. Now, when people use Google to search for celebrities or professional athletes, they'll see a Google Story story with information such as the person's date of birth, recent highlights, and other content on the web. Google already aggregates information about certain topics in its "Knowledge Panel" feature, but the new feature appears to show some of the information that is typically displayed in the user-friendly feature's Knowledge Center feature.

Google did not say when it would expand the new Story feature to include more than just celebrities or athletes.

Google has also begun testing a new feature in India that will use the company's AI technologies to more accurately predict when and where floods can occur in storms or other natural disasters, says Nick Zakrase, Product Manager. Google.

The company said in a blog post that it was in partnership with the Indian Central Water Commission for unspecified data that it will use with information such as "historical events, river level readings, terrain and elevation of a specific area ". take place.

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