Why Google’s help with keywords is so important

Google wants to make even better use of its artificial intelligence. It shows this, for example, with the new forest fire options in Google Maps, but it also plays a greater role in the search engine. It looks for the context of the search and many people benefit from that.

Easier to search in Google

Let’s say you’re looking for earplugs. That is quite a quest, because there are many types. Wired, in-ear, certain brands, with or without noise cancellation: you have to make many choices. Sometimes you are not sure what something is called and ‘earplug that you put in your ear with a silicone plug’ is simply less accurate than ‘in-ear earplugs’.

Google wants to help people by giving more context to a search. This should then appear in a small square so that you can search even more specifically. Think of it as a word cloud or a kind of brainstorming session that you do together with Google. Now, for people who know their way around technology, it’s an advantage to navigate faster to the page they’re looking for, but it has an additional advantage.

Digibets

There are hundreds of thousands of digitized people in the Netherlands. This often refers to people who do not know what to do with technology at all. However, that is not entirely correct. You can also be a digital nerd and still check your friends’ Instagram timelines every day. A digital literate is no longer someone who does not know how to start or close a program on the computer, it often has nothing to do with technology at all.

What helps is that technology itself has also become much more intuitive. You can find your way more easily, partly because you can use a touch screen. Yet there are still many digital people in the Netherlands. That’s mainly because they have problems navigating within technology. That’s why that context on Google is going to be so helpful for the digitally literate.

What a digitized person has difficulty with, is figuring out how to find something. What search should they do to get where they want? How do you navigate to the right heading in the menu on a website? It often has everything to do with terminology and that is where digibes often go wrong. The fact that Google is now going to help with some sort of hints of what might be searched is a lifesaver.

Google MUM

The technology that Google uses for this is called MUM. Not from mother, but from Multitask Unified Model. This model understands information on a broader scale. It can process text, videos and images and can easily make connections. In addition, there is technology within MUM that better understands specific searches.

An example. If you search for ‘2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa’, the ‘to’ used to be filtered out quickly. However, this is essential, because without ‘to’ Google would come to Brazil with visas. Thanks to MUM, Google understands that ‘to’ in this sense is important and does come up with the right information. Especially because you search in English, Google gets confused earlier. MUM understands language better.

Everything happens in the background of Google Search. Google continues to innovate, mainly to make more money. At the same time, it actually helps people to arrive at the right search result faster. When we can expect the new squares with search help in Google, that is unfortunately still unknown.