“Artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google. The ultimate search engine that would understand everything on the Web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing. We’re nowhere near doing that now. However, we can get incrementally closer to that, and that is basically what we work on.”
– Larry Page – Google founder, October 2000.
“Google will fulfil its mission only when its search engine is AI-complete. Do you guys know what that means? That’s artificial intelligence.”
– Larry Page – Google founder, May 2002.
October 26th 2015…mission accomplished. Well, almost.
In late October Bloomberg ran a story which claimed that Google is using a “machine-learning intelligence system system” called RankBrain to process search results and provide relevant results for its users.
Generally rarely keen to comment, Google took the unusual step of confirming the existence of RankBrain and even revealed that it’s fully operational and has been functioning as part of their algorithm for over a year. Artificial intelligence handles 15% of all daily queries inputted to Google.
RankBrain is powered by machine learning. Machine Learning is where a computer teaches itself how to do something, rather than being taught by humans or following detailed programming.
At the moment it is merely one part of Google’s ranking algorithm, although in the year or so since being born it’s quickly become the third most important ranking signal according to senior Google figures.
If decades of science fiction have taught us anything it’s that RankBrain’s true purpose is to destroy all humans. For the time being, however, Google is maintaining that its artificial intelligence is designed to connect very complex searches to the topics that a human searcher desires. It takes a mind-like program to understand the intent of a human mind when a hard question is asked.
Essentially, RankBrain has been determining the intent of ambiguous searches and some of the most challenging queries for Google to interpret.
Most interestingly, by the very nature of artificial intelligence the more queries it receives the more accurate its results will become.
RankBrain has been quietly active for around a year, so in the short term, it means very little. In the medium-term however it always pays to invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in order to give your website the best chance possible of performing strongly across Google.
Claim Your Free SEO Audit Today!
In the long-term, there’s little Matrix can do to prevent the rise of the machines and the demise of humanity, although we’ll certainly look into it for you.
By Matrix Internet
By Conor McCaffrey