Google's search ranking boss says its recent algorithm change helps get users the freshest results, but only when freshness matters

Google

Pandu Nayak, Google Fellow and Vice President, Search

• On Thursday, Google told Business Insider there's a recent change to its search algorithm that it wants users to know about.
• When searching for something in which timeliness matters, Google will now surface the freshest, most-up-to-date information in its featured snippet boxes.
• "Featured snippets have been around for a while now and it's just that as we add features like this, the quality of those featured snippets improves a little bit more," Pandu Nayak, Google's VP of Search, told BI in a recent interview. "They become slightly more relevant and slightly more useful."
• Google says the algorithm change will also help search results become more accurate over time.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Changes to Google's search algorithm are happening all the time. In fact, last year, the company made over 3,000 of them.

But on Thursday, Google told Business Insider there's a recent change it wants users to know about: When searching for something in which timeliness matters, the company will now surface the freshest, most-up-to-date information in its featured snippet boxes.

Complimentary Tech Event

Transform talent with learning that works

Capability development is critical for businesses who want to push the envelope of innovation.Discover how business leaders are strategizing around building talent capabilities and empowering employee transformation.Know More

Say, for instance, you're searching for "tax brackets." Previously, information may have surfaced from previous years, even though most users would be searching for the current year's tax brackets. With the recent update, time-sensitive searches will be met with timely results.

Google

"Featured snippets have been around for a while now and it's just that as we add features like this, the quality of those featured snippets improves a little bit more," Pandu Nayak, Google's VP of Search, told Business Insider in a recent interview. "They become slightly more relevant and slightly more useful. And so users may not explicitly notice that there's been a change other than maybe sort of subtly noticing that, 'Oh, things just started working just as I expect them to work.'"

Read more: Slack has made chat hot. But here's why Google's Gmail product boss says chat and email can work together to be even more useful.

Google says the algorithm change will also help search results become more accurate over time.

Take the recent premiere of the TV show "Stranger Things" as an example. Back in February, it was only known that the series' season three premiere would be "at some point in 2019." But over time, it was announced that the season premiere would be on July 4th. Thus, the information in the featured snippet box for searches corresponding to the Stranger Things premiere was updated as a result of the recent tweak.

Google

Google said the update will be especially important for health-related searches, like a food-recall, when surfacing the most up-to-date information can be critical.

Still, Google's Nayak says not all cases require the freshest results. When searching for, "Why is the sky red at sunset," for instance, the best answer may be found on an older page.

A major part of what Nayak and his team had to solve for with the recent update was understanding when fresher content would actually provide more useful results.

"The notion of needing freshness is a little bit subtle," Nayak said. "It's not always easy."

The search boss also told us that the update wasn't the first time his team had applied freshness as a filter. The "Top Stories" feature, for instance, has taken recency into consideration for years.

As for how Google ultimately decides whether or not to tweak its search algorithm, Nayak tells us that each proposed change runs through a rigorous mix of evaluations by human raters contracted by the company and live testing on its site. Ultimately, the positive effects of any change, which Nayak describes as "wins," need to outweigh the negative, or "losses."

"Every change we make has wins and losses," Nayak said. "And we've got to make sure the wins truly outweigh the losses."

Get the latest Google stock price here.