RankBrain — a smarter ranking system
When we launched RankBrain in 2015, it was the first deep learning system deployed in Search. At the time, it was groundbreaking — not only because it was our first AI system, but because it helped us understand how words relate to concepts. Humans understand this instinctively, but it’s a complex challenge for a computer.
RankBrain helps us find information we weren’t able to before by more broadly understanding how words in a search relate to real-world concepts. For example, if you search for “what’s the title of the consumer at the highest level of a food chain,” our systems learn from seeing those words on various pages that the concept of a food chain may have to do with animals, and not human consumers. By understanding and matching these words to their related concepts, RankBrain understands that you’re looking for what’s commonly referred to as an “apex predator.”
Search bar with the query “what’s the title of the consumer at the highest level of a food chain,” and a mobile view of a featured snippet for “apex predator.”
Thanks to this type of understanding, RankBrain (as its name suggests) is used to help rank — or decide the best order for — top search results. Although it was our very first deep learning model, RankBrain continues to be one of the major AI systems powering Search today.