Google to revamp its keyword based search engine to include semantic search results along with the keywords based results according to WSJ. This is a major revamp considering Google always relied on keywords to give search results based on user queries. If these changes are implemented they will effect large number of websites.
Semantic search gives results based on searcher intent and contextual meaning of the query rather than using loosely related keywords. Semantic search uses Semantics, which focus on relation between words, phrases, symbols and what they stand for.
In the next few months Google start giving direct answers to queries instead of just related web page results according to WSJ, which is radically different than what Google does now. Google relied on PageRank algorithm to predict relevancy and give results till now. These changes once implemented would effect millions of websites that are now optimized for Google PageRank technology.
Amit Singhal, a top Google Search Executive told WSJ that “the search engine will better match search queries with a database containing hundreds of millions of “entities”—people, places and thingsâ€, Google Search will look more like “how humans understand the world†he told WSJ.
Bing already gives answers to queries like flights, travel etc., the latest changes to Google will look similar to this, but probably with a vast information about people, places and things. This information is curated in the last two years along with Meta Web technologies engineers. Google acquired Met Web technologies in 2010 which has an index of 12 million entities and now that has been expanded significantly and it now stands at 200 million entities.
Google is already making several changes to search over the past few months like including Google+ results in search etc., and the current reported changes will cone in the next few months. WSJ reports that overall 10% to 20% of the searches might be effected due to this change.
