I think this is fair; the instructions did sayso what is it that rankbrain actually does? A query comes in to google. Historically, classically google would use an algorithm, probably the same algorithm, at least they’ve said sort of the same algorithm across the board historically to figure out which pages and sites to show. There are a bunch of different ranking inputs, which we’ve talked about many times here on whiteboard friday.
But if you search for this query today
what google is saying is with rankbrain, they’re going to Gmail Email List take any query that comes in and rankbrain is essentially going to be a query interpretation model. It’s going to look at the words in that query. It’s potentially going to look at things possibly like location or personalization or other things. We’re not entirely sure whether rankbrain uses those, but it certainly could. It interprets these queries, and then it’s going to try and determine the intent behind the query and make the ranking signals that are applied to the results appropriate to that actual query.
So here’s what that means
If you search today — I did this search on my mobile Doctors Eamil List device, I did it on my desktop device — for “Best netflix shows” or “Best shows on netflix” or “What are good netflix shows,” “Good netflix shows,” “What to watch on netflix,” notice a pattern here? All five of these searches are essentially asking for the very same thing. We might quibble and say “What to watch on netflix” could be more movie-centric than shows, which could be more tv or episodic series-centric. That’s okay. But these five are essentially, ” what should I watch on netflix?”
