Google@25 highlights five ways of improving search on Africa

By Stellamaris  Ashinze

Lagos, Sept. 7, 2023

Google on Thursday highlighted five ways it has improved search on Africa.

The Communications and Public Relations Manager, Google, West Africa, Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade, said in a statement  that the five ways of improved searches were for users’ best experience.

Speaking on the occasion of Google’s 25th anniversary in Lagos, the communications manager said that the five ways include delivering quality results, deciphering meaning, understanding videos, images and more  spotting and stopping of spam and making search safer.

Kola-Ogunlade said that Google has come up with ways to show notices when topics are “rapidly evolving or when we don’t have high confidence in the quality of results, cautioning that people should approach these results with greater scrutiny”.

He said Google has also invested in other information literacy tools that help people check sources and get context, to evaluate what one is searching.

According to him, “Over the years, Google systems became much more sophisticated, understanding synonyms and the context of words better.

‘’Breakthroughs like the Knowledge Graph helped us understand how people, places and things in the world relate to each other — understanding the world more like people do.

“So we can get exactly what one is looking for, and even take the next step.

‘’In 2015, advances in computer vision made it possible to search what you see with Lens. Google turned your mobile phone camera into a way to explore and ask questions about the world around you,” he said.

He said that the development can enable one learn more about that flower or insect while out for a walk in the neighborhood. Today, people do more than 12 billion visual searches every month with Lens.

Kola-Ogunlade said that Search was built in advanced systems to fight spam in the same way without Google advanced protections.

He said that search results would be clogged with completely irrelevant information, phishing attempts and links to malware.

He said that billions of people rely on Google for information, so there’s always something more “we can do, and new questions to help people with.

‘’That’s why we’re always working to make Search better every day.’’