Introduction

As you will see in the transcript below, this discussion focused on the use of artificial intelligence algorithms in search. Peter outlines for us the approach used by Google on a number of interesting search problems, and how they view search problems in general. This is fascinating reading for those of you who want to get a deeper understanding of how search is evolving and the technological approaches that are driving it. The types of things that are detailed in this interview include:

1. The basic approach used to build Google Translate
2. The process Google uses to test and implement algorithm updates
3. How voice driven search works
4. The methodology being used for image recognition
5. How Google views speed in search
6. How Google views the goals of search overall

Some of the particularly interesting tidbits include:

1. Teaching automated translation systems vocabularly and grammar rules is not a viable approach. There are too many exceptions, and language changes and evolved rapidly. Google Translate uses a data driven approach of finding millions of real world translations on the web and learning from them.
2. Chrome will auto translate foreign language websites for you on the fly (if you want it to).
3. Google tests tens of thousands of algorithm changes per year, and make one to two actual changes every day
4. Test is layered, starting with a panel of users comparing current and proposed results, perhaps a spin through the usability lab at Google, and finally with a live test with a small subset of actual Google users.
5. Google Voice Search relies on 230 billion real world search queries to learn all the different ways that people articulate given words. So people no longer need to train their speech recognition for their own voice, as Google has enough real world examples to make that step unecessary.
6. Google Image search allows you to drag and drop images onto the search box, and it will try to figure out what it is for you. I show a screen shot of an example of this for you below. I LOVE that feature!
7. Google is obsessed with speed. As Peter says “you want the answer before you’re done thinking of the question”. Expressed from a productivity perspective, if you don’t have the answer that soon your flow of thought will be interrupted.

Interview Transcript

Eric Enge: Can you outline at a layman’s level the basic approach that was used to allow Google engineers a translation system that handles 58 languages?

Peter Norvig: Sure — Google Translate uses a data-driven, machine learning approach to do automatic translation between languages. We learn from human examples of translation.

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Key Points

Google product search offers a rich array of opportunities for publishers to place their products in front of shoppers (there is a bulleted list of the opportunities right at the start of the interview). Mayuresh does a great job of spelling out the way to get started with Google Commerce in this interview. If you sell physical products this interview can act as a guide on how to get started and how to prioritize your efforts from an optimization perspective. Here are the key points:

1. You must sell physical products online to participate.
2. One opportunity is to place Google Commerce Search on your site. This provides visitors a way to search your product catalog using Google’s search technology. It is a paid product.
3. The first step is to create a Merchant Center account.
4. The second step is to verify that you are the owner of the website.
5. The next step is to provide a data feed of all your products.
6. Implement a test feed before going live, as this will allow you to find and remove errors upfront.
7. The most important optimization step is good quality data. This is worth a lot of effort, as Google will lose faith in feeds that show errors.
8. Make absolutely sure that the pricing data is accurate.
9. Plan on having a ISBN code, UPC code, or EAN code (Europe) for all your products.
10. Have images for all of your products. (Mayuresh): “it’s to your benfit to send uys good images for every product”.
11. Update your feed (Mayruesh): “at least as often as your website is updated”.
12. The Content API is useful for large feeds where it may be desirable to make partial updates (e.g. change only the price for 200 products). However, you need programming expertise to use it.
13. (Mayuresh): “Product reviews are important, and they provide a good signal to users about products”.

Interview transcript

Eric Enge: What are the benefits of participating in product search?

Mayuresh Saoji: Any merchant that sells physical products online is a good candidate for participating in Google product search. Participating in product search provides you with a forum for sending structured data on your products to Google. It allows merchants to show more rich data in many formats:

• On Google.com
• Google Shopping
• Google Product Search
• Product Ads and Product Extensions
• Google Shopper in Mobile Search

If they are Google Commerce Search customers, which is a paid product, then that same data is leveraged to power the search and discovery experience on their e-commerce website or mobile application.

The end goal is to drive a lot of qualified traffic to publishers, and that’s the best reason for doing this.

Eric Enge: Basically, it is like a Custom Search Engine, but for products?

Google Commerce Search (GCS) is an e-commerce search solution designed specifically with online and multi-channel retailers in mind.

Mayuresh Saoji: It has some general similarities, but Google Commerce Search (GCS) is an e-commerce search solution designed specifically with online and multi-channel retailers in mind. GCS has several advanced features besides product recommendations to help retailers improve their conversion rates.

Eric Enge: Great, what’s the best way for someone to get started?

Mayuresh Saoji: First you create a Merchant Center account. This is where you tell us about your business, your store, and provide us with your URL. The second step is to verify that you are the owner of your website. This is still part of the signup flow, and once that’s done then now you have a valid Merchant Center account. That’s one part of the story.

The other part of the story is to start submitting your data to us. Google has published a product feed specification, and you need to adhere to that specification, and then you can submit data in one of a number of formats to us. You can submit it as a tab delimited (TSV) file, a flat file, XML file, or via the Content API. Many of our larger retailers use the Content API, and that allows them to easily submit hundreds of thousands of items (and much more), and also makes it easy to make very quick changes to specific attributes of those items.

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