Google Opens Up Search Engine Secrets

Google is pledging to demystify the hidden workings of its search engine while refocussing on its core business.

Google admitted that it has come to be perceived as overly secretive in the way it collects and orders information. To counter that, high-level executives are taking part in a roadshow to shed light on how Google searches the web and ranks content.

“Let’s be clear here, there are no guys in a backroom smoking cigars,” Douglas C Merrill, a Google vice-president who works on search, told Times Online.

Google search is critical to doing business on the web. I remember one company filed a lawsuit against Google claiming Google search is an essential service. Google search has truly moved in the domain os essential services.

Google today insisted it is concentrating on making searches “automatic and objective” through the use of algorithms – complex mathematical formulas – to order information.

“And you can’t do this by hand because the web moves too fast … Up to 20 per cent of the content on it changes every month.”

However, despite Google saying that by briefing people on PageRank it is being more transparent, critics will point out that details of the system are already widely known. via TimesOnline