Google Instant, Caffeine and smarter ways to search

MANILA, Philippines - Immediately following the launch of Google Instant in the United States, Google executives flew in town to talk about Caffeine.

In the meantime that Instant is yet to be made available in the country, the search giant discussed Caffeine, a new Web indexing system that promises 50 percent fresher results for Web searches.

Jay Trinidad, the Stanford-educated Filipino regional marketing manager for consumer products of Google Asia-Pacific, said that with Google now processing some two billion search queries per day, there is a need to build a new indexing system.

“The Web is constantly changing. Twenty-four hours of video are uploaded on YouTube every minute. That is the equivalent of 150,000 full-length Hollywood movies every week. That is how much stuff users are generating and adding onto the Web,” he said.

It is also a fact, he said, that 90 percent of Filipinos have watched online video. Users are changing their behavior, they are using their laptops and their mobile devices to search for content on the Internet.

“How can we help you find you what you mean when you come to Google?” he asked. When an image query, for example, is typed in the search box for apple, should Google show the fruit or the computer first?

Caffeine is Google’s ticket to a faster and more comprehensive search engine that grows alongside the exponential growth in online content, which today includes a whole lot more than the traditional news sites and web pages but also blogs, images, videos and public pages of social networks.

Caffeine is important for updating the Web index and processing hundreds of millions of daily changes in Web content. But innovative engineering and a powerful technology is only one side of the equation. Users must be able to search smart to take full advantage of the new capabilities.

In a live demo, Trinidad showed how one can become better searchers and how to demand more from Google.

First, he said majority of searches done by Filipinos are navigational in nature; they want to go somewhere on the Web. The most common searches are Facebook, lyrics, Yahoo, YouTube and games. But to search for things very specific, particularly the unknown or things you never knew existed calls for some techniques. Filipinos are also big on celebrities, current events, travel, and love. Yes, love.

One of the things to remember in searching, he said, is to go back to the basics: make the query short and simple. Instead of typing “how cold should I keep my refrigerator so my food stays fresh,” one can simply type “refrigerator temperature.” It is important to do away with too many words or redundant phrases.

Another way is to use a search “operator” to establish search parameters such as the operator “define” to learn what a word really means or to get the dictionary meaning of a word. If one types DEFINE:LOL in the Google Search box, it will give you the meaning of LOL, which is a common in instant and messaging but has not really reached conventional dictionaries.

The most innovative enhancements to searching implemented by Google, however, are in the area of visual and location-based search.

When looking for images of a Filipino jeepney, the generic result will give you all types of Pinoy jeeps it can cull from the Web index. However, it is now possible to specify a color or look for a specific kind of image such as a picture, a clip art, line drawing or even the size: a big picture, a small picture or just an icon.

Another interesting way to search is the use of maps and location tools. If one is looking for the nearest ATM machine and the nearest pizza outlet in Makati Shangri-La, the Google Map search result can give you the map of the vicinity where the hotel is located. Click “search nearby” and type “pizza” and it will list the nearest pizza outlets in the area and their exact locations on the map. The search can also tell you that the nearest ATM machine is located right inside the hotel and the map can give you directions on how to go to specific places from the hotel.

Like Google Instant, which Trinidad said will be available in the Philippines “in the coming months,” Google Goggles, an application in Android smartphones that allows one to submit a picture or scan bar codes and art objects as a search query rather than typing words in the search box, will be available on the iPhone “soon.”

Increasingly, search is becoming more specific and personal. When you start using mobile devices and search capabilities in daily life and for practical uses rather than merely for research or educational purposes, it is when you realize that technology is becoming ubiquitous and you’ve become part of an increasingly connected world.