home
on Wednesday began
allowing users to extend
online searches to include
messages stored in
accounts at Web-based email service Gmail. "Sometimes the best answer
to your question isn't
available on the public web –
it may be contained
elsewhere, such as in your
email," Google search senior vice president Amit Singhal
said in a blog post. "We think you shouldn't have
to be your own mini search
engine to find the most useful
information; it should just
work." Google invited people to visit
google.com/experimental/
gmailfieldtrial to sign up to
take part in the new feature,
which was still taking shape. "We're developing a way to
find this information for you
that's useful and unobtrusive,
and we'd love your
feedback," Singhal said. The trial was limited to
English language searches and
messages in Gmail accounts. Enhancements under
development include a feature
for organizing air travel
confirmation emails so that a
query of "my flights" would
serve up results that include a concise list of bookings. "These are
baby steps, but
important ones on our way
to building the search engine
of the future," Singhal said. Those steps include upgrading
Google search to look beyond
query words to figure out
what people are actually
seeking online. "Knowledge Graph"
technology built to recognize
people, places or things
signified by keywords was
extended beyond the United
States to every English- speaking country in the
world on Wednesday,
according to Google. "The Knowledge Graph is built
to understand real things in
the world," Google fellow Ben
Gomes told AFP when the
improvement debuted in May. Gomes envisions Google
search being able to
eventually answer tricky
questions such as where to
attend an outdoor Lady Gaga
concert in warm weather or the location of an amusement
park near a vegetarian
restaurant. For now, users of Google
search in English will start
seeing boxes on search pages
suggesting what they are
interested in finding. A demonstration showed
that searching for the word
"Rio,", for example, prompted
the search engine to point out
that one is likely interested in
a Brazilian city, Las Vegas casino, or film. Google has refined its
algorithm to comb
information from databases
such as Freebase and
Wikipedia to give context to
words and then use general search patterns when it comes
to what people tend to want,
Gomes said. Google has also added a
serendipity factor by
surfacing potentially
surprising facts. For example, a search on
"Simpsons" cartoon creator
Matt Groening resulted in a
Knowledge Graph box that
noted his parents and sister
have the same first names as his well-know fictional
characters – Homer, Marge and
Lisa. Google's Knowledge Graph
has been programmed to
recognize more than 500
million people, places, or
things using a combined total
of about 3.5 billion attributes and associations between bits
of information. The change was expected to
affect a large number of
queries, and was tailored with
mobile gadgets in mind since
it lets people dive deeper into
searches with taps of touchscreens. Google is under constant
pressure to refine its service
to defend its place as the
world's favorite search
engine, and the wealth of
online advertising revenue that comes with that
dominance...
Home
