FIND USEFUL INFORMATION INSTANTLY
Get more accurate answers in featured snippets
Microsoft has raced ahead of Google by adding an Ai-powered Chat feature to its Bing search engine, but Google is continuing to improve its own AI tools to provide more accurate answers to search queries.
Last August, it started using a new AI technology called MUM (Multitask Unified Model) to enhance the quality of its ‘featured snippets’. These provide instant information above your main search results, so you don’t need to bother clicking the links below. They work best when you ask a question with a definitive answer, but Google’s old system was being confused by ‘false premises’ and offering inaccurate data.
As we explained in our ‘What’s All the Fuss About’ page in Issue 640 (get it on our 2022 Back Issue CD from www. snipca.com/44660), one of these false premises was ‘When did Snoopy assassinate Abraham Lincoln?’, which produced an answer confirming when and where the fictitious event took place.
Google says MUM does a much better job of detecting false premises and selecting snippets from high-quality sources – or not using them at all when there’s no definitive answer (see www. snipca.com/45172). It also provides clearer details of where it gets its information, so you can click through to learn more.
In our screenshot above right, we can see that Google’s snippet for our query ‘How far is the Sun from the Earth’ (answer: 147.98 million km) was sourced from a Nasa article entitled ‘How Big Is the Solar System?’.
Find recipes faster and save them for later
One tasty new search feature that’s now available globally lets you find recipes faster to get inspiration for your next meal. Search for a recipe-related query on your phone or tablet and Google will now display a dedicated Recipes section at the top of your search results.
This includes rows of ‘Popular recipes’, ‘Quick to cook recipes’ and – if you have personal results turned on – ‘Picks for you’, as well as filters relevant to that type of dish. For example if you search for chicken recipes, these filters will include Slow Cooker, Roasted, Fried, Curry and Jamie Oliver.
Tap the bookmark icon at the top right of a recipe to save it to your ‘cookbook’, which you can access by pressing the Settings cog (see screenshot above) and selecting ‘Your cookbook’. The Settings menu also lets you set food preferences, so you can specify your favourite cuisines, ingredients and dietary requirements, such as gluten-free or vegetarian.
Get advice about coping with the energy crisis
Last November, to reflect the huge increase in searches relating to the energy crisis, Google added a new feature to its search results to “enable people to find relevant and actionable information to help them navigate this crisis and save energy” (www.snipca.com/45162).
When you search for terms such as energy price and energy crisis, you’ll see a dedicated ‘Europe energy crisis’ section that combines the latest new stories on the subject with links to useful advice and information. Click the ‘Local info’ button (see screenshot below) to view resources such as the Government’s ‘Help with energy bills’ page, phone numbers for Citizens Advice and energy-saving recommendations from the International Energy Agency.