Last week, I gave a presentation about Google Search results not being perfect, how we update to improve those results, and how our guidance to creators needs to improve. In this thread, I’ll share my slides and commentary for those who weren’t able to attend my talk… Google’s results aren’t perfect. We do make mistakes. We don’t always get it right. We’ll never get everything right. But what we can do is keep working to show the most helpful content that we can. More here: blog.google/products/searc…

@blairmacgregor @JohnMu As said before when asked about AI, content created primarily for search engine rankings, however it is done, is against our guidance. If content is helpful & created for people first, that's not an issue.

https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/1589681355868504064

wired.com/story/ai-gener…
developers.google.com/search/docs/es… @blairmacgregor @JohnMu Our guidance about creating helpful, people-first content is here:
developers.google.com/search/docs/fu…

That's key to being successful with our helpful content system -- and if it's not helpful content, the system catches that. More here:
developers.google.com/search/updates…

Today at Search On, we discussed how Google is advancing visual search to be far more natural than ever before, and we're how helping people navigate information more intuitively. Here's a closer look at some of what we shared....
blog.google/products/searc… Multisearch with Google Lens in the Google app lets you use a picture and add text to it to find relevant results for previously unaskable questions. It’s now available in English globally & coming to over 70 languages in the next few months. blog.google/products/searc…

Today, Google Search announced new features & tools to transform your shopping search experience. First up, in the US, use “shop” ahead of whatever item you’re interested in & you'll get a visual feed of products, research tools & nearby inventory: blog.google/products/shopp… "Shop the look" is coming this fall on Google Search in the US. Say you’re looking for a new fall wardrobe staple, like a bomber jacket. The tool will show you images of jackets & complementary pieces, plus options for where to buy them: blog.google/products/shopp…

Today, we're rolling out the “Results about you” tool for Google Search, making it easy to request the removal of search results that lead to content with personally identifying information, such as your personal phone number, home address or email address… The tool is available from the Google app and the web beginning today, in the US for English to start (we’re looking to expand the tool globally in the future). Click the three dots next to any result to open the “About this results” panel, then use the “Remove result” option...

Google's "About this result" feature will soon show how widely a source is circulated, reviews about a source, whether a company is owned by another, or even if our systems can’t find much info about a source, helpful context in evaluating information: blog.google/products/searc… Since launching last year, "About this result" has been used more than 2.4 billion times. It's now launched to the Google App & later this year goes beyond English to support Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese & Indonesian: blog.google/products/searc…

Here’s a recap of the many ways we are making @Google Search more helpful and useful, as shared today at #SearchOn 2021. If you missed it, the recording is here: searchon.withgoogle.com and our blog post is here: blog.google/products/searc… Using our AI system known as MUM – short for Multitask Unified Mode – we’ll make it possible in the coming months to combine words and images using Google Lens to better find what you’re looking for, such as [socks with this pattern]. Learn more:
blog.google/products/searc…

Have you ever searched for something in Google Images and sometimes found the results dominated by the same image? To help, we made an improvement to Image Search to reduce duplicate images, so that we can display others that are relevant yet visually distinct.... There are also times when a query can relate to different things. For example, [jaguar] could mean either the animal or the car. Sometimes, one meaning can dominate image results. Our improvement works to show images for alternative meanings, when that seems helpful....

Last week, we shared about how we will soon identify individual passages of a web page to better understand how relevant a page is to a search. This will be a global change improving 7% of queries:
blog.google/products/searc…

In this thread, more about how it works…. Typically, we evaluate all content on a web page to determine if it is relevant to a query. But sometimes web pages can be very long, or on multiple topics, which might dilute how parts of a page are relevant for particular queries….

We are currently working to resolve two separate indexing issues that have impacted some URLs. One is with mobile-indexing. The other is with canonicalization, how we detect and handle duplicate content. In either case, pages might not be indexed.... If a previously indexed page has gone, it might be the mobile-indexing issue, where we’re failing to select any page at all to index. If the canonical issue is involved, URL Inspector may show the URL as a duplicate & the Google-selected canonical will be different from it….

It was noticed today hateful memes appear in image results for “jewish baby strollers.” We apologize. These don’t reflect our opinions. We try to show content matching all key terms searched for, as people normally want. But for “data voids” like this, it can be problematic... For “baby strollers”, there’s lots of helpful content. For this, there’s not. That’s not surprising. It’s not likely a topic normally searched for, nor an actual product that’s marketed. There’s a “void” of good content to surface that matches what was asked for…

When searching on Google, by default we automatically also search for any synonyms & related words to what was entered, as this is often helpful. Yesterday, our systems that do this raised concerns we were intentionally making some ideological statement. This was not the case…. If Google only returned documents that contained the exact words entered in a search, we would miss displaying relevant content. For example, “change” as used by a searcher might fail to match documents that talk about “replace” or “exchange” or “adjust” as written by a creator…

We’re aware an image for Sir Winston Churchill is missing from his Knowledge Graph entry on Google. We apologise for any concern. This was not purposeful & will be resolved. Images in such panels are automatically created & updated. During an update, they can briefly disappear…. If a Knowledge Graph image is missing due to an update, the subject will be named but lack an image in anything automatically generated from the Knowledge Graph. This is why Churchill’s image (but not his name) is missing from some lists. It is temporary & will be resolved….

Google Search has never seen as many searches for a single topic continue over a sustained period as is happening now with COVID-19. Many searches are for news about what’s happening in local areas, such as sheltering updates or the latest on testing. Here’s how we’re helping…. What is local news content? It can be material produced by publishers like local newspapers, that we understand specifically serve particular cities or regions. It can also be content we identify as relevant to a particular area, even if written by those outside the area....

Over the past few weeks, a number of resources have been made available from Google Search for sites & organizations dealing with COVID-19 / coronavirus responses. Here’s a recap ranging from implementing temporary hours to special announcements to posting virtual events & more… Business hours & temporary closures -
Review the guidance from @GoogleMyBiz on how to change your business hours or indicate temporary closures or how to create COVID-19 / coronavirus posts:
support.google.com/business/answe…

Today we launched an SOS Alert for searches at Google related to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus. We do these regularly for crisis events around the world where public safety might be at risk . Here’s a refresher on what you’ll find.... You know an alert is active because of the SOS Alert header that appears at the top of the page. You can use the sharing icon on the right-side of the header to generate a link to share the Google search page with the special alert information with others....

If a web page listing is elevated into the featured snippet position, we no longer repeat it in the first page of results. This declutters the results & helps users locate relevant information more easily. Featured snippets count as one of the ten web page listings we show.... This change launched yesterday for 100% of our search results globally. There’s no change to the overall set of web results we are showing. There are still ten unique listings, as before. Deduplicating simply means we’re no longer showing any of those unique listings twice....

Yesterday, a concern was raised that calorie information was required for recipes to be included in or to rank well for Google Search. This is not the case. Moreover, structured data like this has no impact on ranking in web search. This thread has more we hope eases concerns... Content owners can provide structured data as an *optional* way to enhance their web page listings. It has no impact on ranking. Using it may simply help pages that already rank well appear more attractive to potential visitors: developers.google.com/search/docs/gu…

Last year, our search results on mobile gained a new look. That’s now rolling out to desktop results this week, presenting site domain names and brand icons prominently, along with a bolded “Ad” label for ads. Here’s a mockup: The format puts a site’s brand front & center, helping searchers better understand where information is coming from, more easily scan results & decide what to explore. Learn more about the new look in our post from last year, when it launched on mobile: blog.google/products/searc…

BERT, our new way for Google Search to better understand language, is now rolling out to over 70 languages worldwide. It initially launched in Oct. for US English. You can read more about BERT below & a full list of languages is in this thread....
blog.google/products/searc… BERT is rolling out for: Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azeri, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified & Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati.... (MORE)

In early November, we began making use of neural matching as part of the process of generating local search results. Neural matching allows us to better understand how words are related to concepts, as explained more here:

https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1108776358430138368

The use of neural matching means that Google can do a better job going beyond the exact words in business name or description to understand conceptually how it might be related to the words searchers use and their intents...