gmb45
12th August, 2009, 04:01 AM
Google has revealed a brand new version of its online search engine, claiming the results will be faster and more relevant than ever before.
Although the new engine looks virtually the same as the current one, Google engineers who have named the projects Caffeine said radical changes behind the scenes would vastly improve the service for ordinary users.
'It will push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions,' a post on the official company blog said.
A new feature is a drop down menu that appears as you type in key terms giving suggestions of what you might be looking for. So type in 'London' and 'London broil', 'London weather' and 'London eye' are just some of the alternatives that appear.
The new engine was kept a closely-guarded secret until it was unveiled on the company's official blog last night. It is now available for testing online.
A few test searches showed results flashing up almost instantaneously. However, as the engine will rank results differently, it could affect businesses who rely on Google results to drive traffic and use 'search engine optimisation' to boost their results.
Google posted on its blog: 'The new infrastructure sits 'under the hood' of Google?s search engine, which means that most users won?t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences.'
It called for web developers to provide feedback on what they find ranks better or worse in comparison with the old system, as well as report any erroneous results.
Google 'Caffeine' comes just two weeks after Microsoft struck a deal to replace Yahoo's search engine with its own Google competitor, called Bing. Yahoo Search and Bing are the second and third most popular engines after Google.
Bing, which launched in June, aims to be better at working out what users are really looking for.
A search for the website Facebook, for example, would display just one result linking to the site itself, but gives users the option of displaying further results about the site.
It followed the launch of start-up search engine 'Wolfram Alpha' in May. This site aims to answer specific questions without throwing up millions of optional pages. However it regularly throws up the result 'Wolfram Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input
Although the new engine looks virtually the same as the current one, Google engineers who have named the projects Caffeine said radical changes behind the scenes would vastly improve the service for ordinary users.
'It will push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions,' a post on the official company blog said.
A new feature is a drop down menu that appears as you type in key terms giving suggestions of what you might be looking for. So type in 'London' and 'London broil', 'London weather' and 'London eye' are just some of the alternatives that appear.
The new engine was kept a closely-guarded secret until it was unveiled on the company's official blog last night. It is now available for testing online.
A few test searches showed results flashing up almost instantaneously. However, as the engine will rank results differently, it could affect businesses who rely on Google results to drive traffic and use 'search engine optimisation' to boost their results.
Google posted on its blog: 'The new infrastructure sits 'under the hood' of Google?s search engine, which means that most users won?t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences.'
It called for web developers to provide feedback on what they find ranks better or worse in comparison with the old system, as well as report any erroneous results.
Google 'Caffeine' comes just two weeks after Microsoft struck a deal to replace Yahoo's search engine with its own Google competitor, called Bing. Yahoo Search and Bing are the second and third most popular engines after Google.
Bing, which launched in June, aims to be better at working out what users are really looking for.
A search for the website Facebook, for example, would display just one result linking to the site itself, but gives users the option of displaying further results about the site.
It followed the launch of start-up search engine 'Wolfram Alpha' in May. This site aims to answer specific questions without throwing up millions of optional pages. However it regularly throws up the result 'Wolfram Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input