Google App Now Understands Complex Queries

Google has been really upping its game. The latest development coming from the search engine giant revolves around its voice search in the Google App. In a blog post published Monday, Google explained how its voice search and Knowledge Graph evolved over the years and that it can now even understand and respond to complex questions.

The company ventured into understanding and responding to questions with voice search in 2008 and the Knowledge Graph in 2012. As Wikipedia defines it, the Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base used by Google to enhance its search engine's search results with semantic-search information gathered from a wide variety of sources.

“The Knowledge Graph is about collecting information about objects in the real world”, explains Shashi Thakur, Technical Lead at Google.

Starting with providing information on single entities, slowly and steadily it started understanding simple questions. And now, Google seems to be “growing up” a little more, it says:

“The Google app is starting to truly understand the meaning of what you’re asking. We can now break down a query to understand the semantics of each piece so we can get at the intent behind the entire question”.

Citing examples of various complex questions that Google can now handle, Satyajeet Salgar, Product Manager at Google, explains that Google now understands superlatives (tallest, largest etc), reference to particular points in time and even complex combinations like “Who was the U.S. President when the Angels won the World Series?”

Salgar concluded saying, “The next time you’re curious about something, ask the Google app, and know that we’re working hard on understanding your questions better so that we can find the answer to whatever you’re looking for.”