How Google Search (Probably) Uses Machine Learning

Google is 21-years-old, and it's safe to say that the web's biggest and best search engine looks nothing like it did back in 1998 -- even the iconic logo has a different font and color scheme. However, the most important changes to Google have been the updates to crawling, indexing and ranking, which is how the site delivers high-quality search results when web users type in queries. Since so many updates occur every year, it is difficult to choose just one update that rises above the rest -- unless you count the update on Oct. 26, 2015, when machine learning RankBrain popped into existence. Google has always looked ahead to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies in its myriad web services, including search, so it should hardly be surprising that it was among the first web companies to integrate machine learning into its algorithms. RankBrain is now a key component of Google's core algorithm, and it assists with analyzing data from crawling and page indexing to ensure that search results are in the best possible order for each query-maker.