NEWS: 20 (Rare) Questions for Google Search Guru Udi Manber

20 (Rare) Questions for Google Search Guru Udi Manber

(Photograph by James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media, via Wikimedia Commons/Flickr)

Since there has been such a thing as Web search, Udi Manber has been working on Web search. Previously a computer science professor at the University of Arizona, then a senior vice president at Amazon and Yahoo's chief scientist, Manber is now vice president in charge of search quality for Google, where he makes sure results are engineered to the utmost (near) perfection. In one of the only public interviews he's ever sat down for, Manber gives PM a glimpse into how Google's dominant engine helps you find what you want, how you can help it find you and how search is constantly evolving with the pace of technology. —Glenn Derene 

How have you seen search evolve in the time that you’ve been working in the field?
It’s been tremendous. I like to say that it’s almost science fiction every five years. When the first search engine appeared in ‘94, compared with when I came out of academia in ‘99, compared with the way it was in 2003, compared with the way it is today—every five years there have been just incredible advances. What we do now, we couldn’t have foreseen 10 years ago. Today we’re finding a lot more information, and the questions are getting a lot harder. People expect more from us...

Google tweaked search 450 times in 2007

Posted by Stephen Shankland 

Google is typically tight-lipped about it the inner workings of its search business, but there are a few nuggets worth looking at in a Popular Mechanics interview with Udi Manber, the Google vice president who oversees search quality. Among them: Google rejiggered its search algorithm 450 times last year.

Ed: Search or SEM?