In a rare exercise of transparency, Google has announced a new functionality that will explain the motives behind each search result, including the terms used and their relevance.
How Google works seems magical . We write one or more terms, and a personalized list of links appears, adapted to our situation and location, and it is very likely that on the first page we will find what we were looking for. It is thanks to this precision that Google has become the default Internet search engine.
But that “magic” is not cheap, it draws on data from all over the Internet, especially yours; In addition, this means that each person receives different results, so it can be difficult to understand why one link appears and not another. Starting today, Google is pulling the veil off its technology a bit, showing the reasoning behind its choices.
The new functionality will appear as a three-dot button next to each result. If we click on it, a list of factors that have been taken into account to show you that link will appear , which will allow you to better understand why Google thinks you may be interested.
It’s not that Google has suddenly decided to go public with all its secrets. This function does not delve into technicalities and complexities of Google’s algorithms, it only shows in a simple way, what relationship the results have with your search .
For example, you can indicate which terms you have searched for appear in the result, if it is in your language, or if it is relevant to your localization; but it will not reveal what data of yours it has used to consider that it is important to you.
The “important factors” that Google will use to display the results will be:
Matching terms : this is the most basic, simply if the words we have searched for appear on the web page.
Related terms : Google not only looks for the words that we have entered, its algorithms also look for terms that are related; for example, if we search for “how to cook fish in the oven”, it will also search for “recipe” even though we have not put it.
Links : Google looks at links that lead to other pages with similar search terms, to understand if that content is considered useful among the community.
Local relevance : Google uses geolocation and language data to find content that is relevant to our region; for example, to search for rules related to our city.
This functionality reaches English-speaking countries first, but Google promises that it will reach the whole world in the coming months.
