New Delhi: Google has unveiled an upgrade to its search engine with an update called as ‘Hummingbird', in a bid to provide better search answers to its users.
The upgrade, which comes after nearly three years, affects about 90 per cent of Google searches.
At a presentation, Google's senior vice president Amit Singhal said that Hummingbird is the major overhaul to the search engine since it revised the way it indexes websites three years ago as part of a redesign called Caffeine. The company said the new algorithm is useful for longer and more complex queries.
According to Google the upgrade was required as users demand more natural and conversational interactions with a search engine. One such example is people using their voice to speak requests into mobile phones, smart watches and other wearable technology.
Google says Hummingbird is capable of understanding concepts and the relationships between them rather than simply words, unlike Caffeine, which was targeted at better indexing of websites.
In that sense, it is an extension of Google's "Knowledge Graph" concept introduced last year aimed at making interactions more human.
At the event, the search behemoth also announced an updated search app on Apple's iOS, as well as a more visible presence for voice search on its home page.
