Google explains technology behind search rankings

17th July 2008

Google has offered more information on how its technology helps to compile website search rankings on its official blog.

Amit Singhal, a Google fellow, said that the company has worked on improving its indexing and crawling system over the years, as well as coming up with new technologies that attempt to offer more relevant results for users.

These include a system whereby a concept is linked to a relevant page, even when that page does not actually feature the term in question, as well as spelling suggestion and synonym solutions.

"Our work on interpreting user intent is aimed at returning results people really want, not just what they said in their query," Mr Singhal commented.

"This work starts with a world class localisation system and adds to it our advanced personalisation technology."

According to a recent Hitwise report, Google accounted for 87 per cent of all online searches made by UK-based web users during the month of June.