Web Search: Challenges and Directions

 Speaker 

:

Dr. Amit Singhal Google,

Fellow Google, Inc.

Amit Singhal is a Google Fellow. According to the New York Times, Mr. Singhal is the master of what Google calls its “ranking algorithm” — the formulas that decide which Web pages best answer each user’s question. A native of India,Amit got his bachelors degree in Computer Science from IIT Roorkee in 1989.Amit holds a MS in Computer Science from University of Minnesota, Duluth, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. At Cornell Amit studied with Gerard Salton, a pioneer in the field of Information Retrieval.Amit runs a team in Google's Search Quality group. He is and his team are responsible for the Google search algorithms.

Abstract

:

These are exciting times for the field of Web search. Search engines are used by millions of people every day, and the number is growing rapidly. This growth poses unique challenges forsearch engines: they need to operate at unprecedented scales while satisfying an incredible diversity of information needs. Furthermore, user expectations have expanded considerably, moving from "give me what I said" to "give me what I want". Finally, with the lure of billions of dollars of commerce guided by search engines, we have entered a new world of "Adversarial Information Retrieval". This talk will show that the world of algorithm and system design for commercial search engines can be described by two of Murphy's Laws: a) If anything can go wrong, it will; and b) Even if nothing can go wrong, it will anyway.

http://singhal.info/