Google GSA gets smart (and smarter automatically)

Google announced some updates for the generation 6 of the GSA. They added a functionality that boosts relevance for documents / terms automatically when the link is clicked in the search results.

From InformationWeek:

Chief among the additions is a new algorithm
called Self-Learning Scorer, which analyzes employee clicks and behavior to
improve the relevance of search results.
If, for example, most employees searching for a given term click on the third search result, the GSA will place that term higher on the search results page for future searches.
On the Internet, Google gets highly relevant search results in part because of its
PageRank algorithm, which analyzes Web links and treats them as votes for
relevance. On corporate intranets, a rich link structure is absent, which makes search relevance harder.
The Self-Learning Scorer system should help compensate for the absence of Web links inside corporate firewalls.
[...]
"In other words, the GSA is moving upstream, while keeping the price low, and continuing to disrupt the confused search market," says Feldman in the report.

Google makes good use of "User Generated Content", in this case the fact that a clicked result is the "proof" of the document being relevant for that particular search.

It is good to see that the difference between internet search and enterprise search is becoming clearer.