Improving Google search is like changing the engine of a 747 jet that?s flying at 30,000 feet, feels Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow and an accomplished software engineer at the Silicon Valley based search company. ?More than a billion searches come in every day, and we are always making improvements to the engine even as they are coming in?and most of the time, search gets better without the user even noticing,? he says. Google?s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. But the ?holy grail? of search is true understanding of human intentions, the search scientist tells Sudhir Chowdhary in a recent interaction. Excerpts:

In recent months, search has undergone a major transformation, with functionalities such as addition of voice search, integration of Web, news search etc. What further changes do you see going forward?

To understand what?s coming next, let?s first take a step back and look at where we have come from. A decade back when I started working at Google we were asking ?Where can we go from here?? At that point, we were good at searching for exact phrase matches?if you searched for IBM, you would be happy if we took you to the IBM home page. But the search engine didn?t even understand that you were looking for ?International Business Machines,? it was just matching the keyword ?IBM.? Computers don?t understand language the same way that humans do. So a decade ago we started a journey to understand language.

Today, search understands a whole lot. You can type ?flag of India? into the search box and see a picture of the flag. Not only do we understand language in the morphological sense, but we also understand user intent. Search has moved from keywords to intent, and that is the marvel of the last decade in search. Users just give us a few words and we understand what they are looking for. And that has happened at the same time as we have made the speed of returning results to you much faster. In just a decade, an entire generation of users have come to expect search to just work.

The question still remains, where do we go from here?

I realise that search is still far from where it could be. I want my search engine to be like an expert friend who knows me. I should be able to ask for information like, ?Do mosquito nets that are laced with anti-insect spray work more effectively than mosquito nets that are not laced with insect spray?? And it will answer like an expert and say ?according to this study, this is the result.?

Search is an amazing tool which has gone from providing just data to information, and once you have information you start becoming knowledgeable. Knowledge to me is how much you can know in the least possible time. We are just a few years into the process where Google is moving toward providing users knowledge, and this will probably take another decade to achieve.

What will be Google?s key focus to make search better for netizens?

We want to take Google to the next level to become a knowledge engine. Tailoring results to users still is and will continue to be one of the areas we focus on as a way to get you to the knowledge you are looking for faster. But the ?holy grail? of search is true understanding of human intentions. If Google can understand what you mean, it can deliver you exactly the information you are looking for instantaneously.

Is Google looking at bringing in augmented reality into search?

What we aim for is augmented intelligence, and translation tools are a great example of this. With the recent introduction of URLs in non-Latin letters, translation tools are becoming increasingly crucial to the way people communicate. The Web is clearly becoming an increasingly international place, and English (and other widely spoken languages) is no longer the only key language on the Web. We have put together an ?Inside Google Translate? video to explain how this technology works.

Another recent example of using machine translation to give people answers, no matter what language they are in, is that we now give translated English-language results alongside those in the searcher?s language in several languages including Hindi. Steps like these are aimed at breaking down the language barrier between people and the knowledge they seek, and this is especially important in languages where the availability of online content is fairly limited.

Quality of search is a prerequisite for a good search experience from the user point of view. How does Google ensure the quality of search?

We continue rapidly innovating to make search more intelligent, personal and interactive. Improving Google search is like changing the engine of a 747 jet that?s flying at 30,000 feet. More than a billion searches come in every day, and we are always making improvements to the engine even as they are coming in? and most of the time, search gets better without the user even noticing. More than 1,000 man-years have gone into developing the Google search algorithm over the years.

In February, we rolled out a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking ?a change that noticeably impacted 11.8% of our queries. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites?sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites?sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on. In August we rolled this change out internationally.

Another search quality improvement we made last year was to teach our algorithms to better determine the appropriate level of freshness for a given query. However, search is far from a solved problem, and we are constantly innovating to make it better.

What is your dream search engine of the future?

My dream search engine of the future helps and guides me throughout the day, telling me what I should be doing next without me having to ask. It should keep track of my schedule and remind me to get going to my next meeting because there?s a traffic jam on the way. It should also help me prepare for my kids? birthdays by figuring out from our online interactions what gifts they?d be happiest to get and telling me where I can get the best deals to buy them?and send me directions to the store.