Downloader: A philosophical crawl through Google's legendary search engine algorithm

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

A philosophical crawl through Google's legendary search engine algorithm

Over at Wired, there's a fantastic, exclusive feature on The Google Algorithm. It's quite easy to take for granted just how awesome the Google engine is.

We know it works, but we don't know how it works... except a few mythical bigwigs at Google, anyway. Now, I'm not about to tell you that the Wired article reveals Google's best-kept industry secrets, but it does illuminate.

And sometimes a little illumination is all you need! You might not care about the specifics of fuel injection, but it might be kinda cool to find out how fuel injection was discovered -- and that's what Wired's Google story does: it tells you how Google came to dominate the market. More importantly, it details the competition that Google now has in the form of Bing, and the methods they will employ to keep ahead of the pack.

Did you know that there have been at least eight major overhauls of the Google search engine? Or that PageRank, though memorable, is all but dead? PageRank and over 200 other signals are used to resolve a webpage's relevance and importance -- and they've all been added without any disruption to service! Apparently it was a piece of Wittgensteinian philosophy that led them to derive the difference between 'hot dogs' and 'boiling puppies' -- context is king!

Anyway, if you find yourself with a few minutes to spare this Saturday, give it a read -- it'll make your searches even more enjoyable, trust me!