Google Search To Undergo Huge Makeover

Google's search engine is having one of the biggest overhauls in the company's history to give users more than just a list of links related to their queries.

In a few months' time, the company aims to give people the facts and answers relevant to their search at the top of the results page.

The links that currently appear at the top will be found just below.

The Wall Street Journal said Google is not replacing its current keyword-search system, which determines the importance of a website based on the words it contains, how often other sites link to it, and dozens of other measures.

Instead, Amit Singhal , a senior vice president at Google, said the search engine will match search queries with a database containing millions of "entities" - people, places and things - which the company has quietly amassed over the past two years.

Mr Singhal said it will look like "how humans understand the world", noting that for many searches at the moment "we cross our fingers and hope there's a web page out there with the answer".

The internet giant is attempting to stay ahead of Microsoft's Bing search engine, which is already designed to answer Who? What? Why? and How? questions.

The makeover also means users will have another alternative to sites like Wikipedia which can answer all manner of weird and wonderful queries.

In figures released in November 2011 Google had a 91% share of total UK internet searches.