Google now caters to users from 700 percent more locations

Google now caters to users from 700 percent more locations

Google Search has now expanded its network considerably, according to researchers from the University of Southern California (USC). According to their findings, the search engine now caters to users from 700 percent more locations than a year before. In the last 10 months, the search giant has dramatically increased the number of sites from which it serves client queries and has also repurposed existing infrastructure to change the physical way that Google processes web searches. From October 2012 to late July 2013, the number of locations serving Google’s search infrastructure increased from a little less than 200 to a little more than 1,400. The number of Internet service providers also increased from just over 100 to more than 850. Much of the expansion reflects the company utilising client networks that it already relied on for hosting content like videos on YouTube, and reusing them to relay and speed up user requests and responses for search and ads, according to researchers.

Google Search has now expanded its network considerably

According to Matt Calder, lead author of the study, “Google already delivered YouTube videos from within these client networks. But they’ve abruptly expanded the way they use the networks, turning their content-hosting infrastructure into a search infrastructure as well." The study found that previously submitted search requests on Google would go directly to a data centre. Now, a user's search request will first go to the regional network, which relays it to the Google data center. While this might seem like it would make the search take longer by adding in another step, the process actually speeds up searches. Data connections typically need to “warm up” to get to their top speed — the continuous connection between the client network and the Google data center eliminates some of that warming up lag time. In addition, content is split up into tiny packets to be sent over the Internet and some of the delay that users may experience is due to the occasional loss of some of those packets, researchers said. By designating the client network as a middleman, lost packets can be spotted and replaced more quickly. The team behind the study developed a new method of tracking down and mapping servers that identifies when they are in the same data centre as well as estimates where that data centre is.

With inputs from news agencies

ReadMore:Android Games