Google RankBrain – Artificial Intelligence for processing search results

Google, one of the most popular names in online search engines, recently confirmed to Bloomberg that it is using an artificial intelligence system to help process search results and provide more relevant answers to search queries. The system which is named RankBrain is not a complete replacement of the current search algorithm of Google i.e. Hummingbird, but it helps the search engine better understand and deal with ambiguous queries.

Understanding RankBrain

This system is a machine learning AI that Google is applying to its search algorithm to provide better results to user queries.

Machine learning is a field of computer science wherein a computer program teaches itself to understand and make predictions on different kinds of data. In Google’s case this works on different search queries. 

  RankBrain Algorithm

 RankBrain embeds large amounts of written language in the form of mathematical entities, called vectors, which can be understood by computers. When this system is presented with an unfamiliar word or a phrase, using its data, it can predict what will have a similar meaning, and thus, filters and displays results accordingly.

With such an AI system in place, Google can deal better with unique and confusing search terms by users. Other than this, the Google RankBrain algorithm offers many more benefits for the search engine like –

•   Providing high accuracy – In recent tests RankBrain was pit against Google Engineers, where this AI system proved to be more successful by being almost 10% more accurate. So seeing this, it is clear how precise this system is.
• Help in managing complex searches – Google processes billions of queries each day and almost 15% of them are terms that have never been seen before. Most of these are intricate queries that are difficult to process. With RankBrain AI, the algorithms can effectively understand such queries and display the most appropriate results.
• Help in understanding ambiguous searches – As this system is machine learning, it can form associations and understand even ambiguous queries. In this way, it helps the search algorithms respond cleverly to such queries.

Impact of this AI(Artificial Intelligence) system

There are numerous signals that go into an algorithm to determine the Google search results and how they are ranked. Due to its efficiency RankBrain has been ranked as the third most important signal, by Google. Through its AI and learning capabilities, it has provided Google a better way to present results to its users. Even for people, now they can get more appropriate results with such a system working on the search algorithms.

This algorithm has brought a revolution in the online search world of Google and especially for digital marketers it is better that they soon familiarise with this system.