“How Google Search works” is a perennially asked question, with the query increasingly asked in political contexts. The company has taken steps to publicize and be more transparent in recent years, including a Search Liaison, with the latest being an updated video explainer.
Published on YouTube this morning, it comes nine years after the original “How Search Works” video with Matt Cutts. Today’s is just a voiceover, graphics, and markups in the style of popular explainers.
Two minutes longer than the original, Google is fast to emphasize how it’s only 5 minutes. Topics covered include history, indexing (or mapping) the web’s pages, ranking sites, and serving results.
The query used to illustrate is amusingly “lasagna” and you’re walked through the high-level process of a search, though there’s no overview of Knowledge Panels. Challenges discussed include spam, with the video equating the concept to scam robocalls.
It’s well worth a watch and shows screenshots of the first homepage, while briefly touching upon the original concept of PageRank. Linking joins other concepts like search location and time of publish.
There’s also discussion of Search Quality Raters and the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. The latter PDF is linked to at the end of the video, with the dedicated “How Search Works” page is also listed.
This how Google Search works video might be older as it using the previous, non-Material Theme redesign of the homepage.
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