"Let’s go back and basically replace the engine of a 1950s car"

Google on Thursday announced one of the biggest changes to its search engine, a rewriting of its algorithm to handle more complex queries that affects 90 percent of all searches.

Google announced the new algorithm, called Hummingbird, at an event to celebrate the search engine’s 15th birthday. Google revealed few details about how the new algorithm works or what it changed.

Google originally matched keywords in a search query to the same words on Web pages. Hummingbird is the culmination of a shift to understanding the meaning of phrases in a query and displaying Web pages that more accurately match that meaning.

The algorithm also builds on work Google has done to understand conversational language, like interpreting what pronouns in a search query refer to.

The Google home page has a birthday piñata game. It will probably be down by this time tomorrow. Check it out. My highest score was 147.

New York Times