Credit: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/12/package-tracking-early-access-program.html
Google is once again raising the bar, and very soon package tracking on Search could be a possibility. The search engine giant is working on the possibility of people being able to track their packages on Google Search. When launched, the functionality would let you search for your shipment via Google Search regardless of the carrier—DHL, FedEx, UPS, and the rest of them.
Google in an announcement said:
“People frequently come to Google Search looking to find information on the status of their packages. To make it easier to find, we have created a new package tracking feature that enables shipping companies to show people the status of their packages right on Search.”
Package tracking will be made possible through the Early Adopters Program available in all countries. Shipping companies will have the opportunity to sign-up to participate in the feature and provide feedback on how to improve it. Interested carriers are expected to provide a RESTful JSON or XML API that returns the package tracking information.
Oftentimes, people come to Search to get information about the correct website where they can search for their packages. In the future, when you come to Google to search for a courier company’s website, you will be able to enter the tracking number and know exactly where the package is.
There is currently no indication as to when the feature will become officially available, but we can only assume that it will not take a long time. It is a great move in my opinion—and one that will be of help to everyone involved.
Search results on Google Search have significantly improved in the last decades; but surely there are rooms for improvement. Things, however, got even better with a major update announced by the search engine giant last October. The update, which perhaps, is the most significant in the last couple of years, will improve how natural results are presented.
Underlining how search queries over the years have transformed and how Google has been able to improve Search to meet the heavy demands from users, the company explained why it is important to improve on understanding of natural search queries. This will be achieved by applying a neural network-based technique known as Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers or BERT for short. BERT according to Google, “enables anyone to train their own state-of-the-art question answering system.”
The change was prompted by acknowledging how Search’s language understanding capabilities are still prone to failures, especially when they are complex. “In fact, that’s one of the reasons why people often use “keyword-ese,” typing strings of words that they think we’ll understand, but aren’t actually how they’d naturally ask a question.”
