But just as Google isn’t ready to rest on its laurels, its competitors aren’t ready to concede defeat.

Google’s search algorithm is a work in progress — constantly tweaked and refined to return higher-quality results. Here are some of the most significant additions and adaptations since the dawn of PageRank.

Google’s synonym system understood that a dog was similar to a puppy and that boiling water was hot. But it also concluded that a hot dog was the same as a boiling puppy. The problem was fixed in late 2002 by a breakthrough based on philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theories about how words are defined by context.

Steven Levy wired.com

An interesting article offering insight into the changing face of search engines.