In this Supernova2007 presentation, Udi Manber, Vice President of Engineering at Google, gives you a behind the scenes look at how his team of mathematicians, computer scientists, and engineers handles real world queries to deliver meaningful results.

It's a hard job. The number of queries, their diversity, and the expectations of users are constantly increasing. At the same time, the queries submitted are not always ideally formulated. The job of the search group is to connect their parsing algorithms to the way people think in the real world.

Manber uses actual queries and their results to illustrate how Google does this. He discusses how meaning changes according to context, and how Google can suggest alternate queries that may point to what the user is really looking for. Manber also shows how search results will differ according to the originating country of the query, and he provides some insight into Google's latest innovations, including the use of translating technology and the integration of video and maps into the search results.