Google Implements ‘Orion’ Technology

Improves Search Refinements & Adds Longer Snippets

Google is announcing two changes to search results this morning. The first involves the use of longer “snippets” (text extracts containing the keywords) when users input queries of three words or more. The objective is to provide more context to help the user determine if the site is worth visiting. Many search engines have attempted to address this same problem with visual tools or “previews” of one sort or another. (Vanessa will postscript with more detail about snippets.)

It’s difficult to predict whether or how longer snippets will affect user behavior but it may create incentives to input longer queries over time. Longer queries theoretically lead to better results and more targeted ads.

That description is thematically consistent with the expansion of snippets as a “preview” strategy. But the way Orion is being implemented is through search refinements. Refinements are a collection of links that contain related query formulations. They currently appear (mostly) at the bottom of results pages as “searches related to . . .” Here’s an “old” example for “French Revolution“:

Refinements will now be improved and appear more frequently, and more often at the top of pages. These changes will launch globally, in 37 languages across Google. Here’s how Google describes how the new refinements will operate:

Starting today, we’re deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search, and one of its first applications lets us offer you even more useful related searches (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page).

For example, if you search for [principles of physics], our algorithms understand that “angular momentum”, “special relativity”, “big bang” and “quantum mechanic” are related terms that could help you find what you need.

Even though the technology is being used at the moment only in refinements, and thus at the margins of search results, this appears to be a first step in a larger integration of Orion’s technology. It thus struck me as a potentially significant development.