Google Labs has released a beta version of its Web Accelerator software
designed to make surfing the Internet faster and more efficient.
The search giant said the latest application will speed the online
experience and save significant amounts of time when pulling up Web pages.
“Web Accelerator is an application that uses Google’s global computer
network to make Web pages load faster,” the company said.
There are numerous strategies Google has employed to make Web browsing
faster, including sending page requests through Google machines dedicated to
handling Web Accelerator traffic. It also stores copies of frequently viewed
pages to make them quickly accessible.
The software downloads only Web pages that have been updated since they were last visited by a viewer, the company said. It also “prefetches” pages onto a computer in
advance and then manages Internet connections to reduce delays, compressing
the data before sending it out.
However, for security reasons the software does not speed the transfer of
pages encrypted with the HTTPS: protocol, Google said.
Dial-up users will not experience a speed enhancement because the program
has been optimized for broadband connections, Google said.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company is also working to improve the ranking methods on Google News.
Recent patents filed in the U.S. and world patent offices detail a new
approach to ranking news stories in Web search results. The system, dubbed
“TrustSearch,” would sort news by source, rather than the current method of
classifying information based on a story’s relation to a term.
The TrustSearch database instead would use a series of variables,
including story length, number of staff employed by an organization and
amount of traffic to its Web site.
Using that method, Web sites like CNN.com or the NYTimes.com for
example, would receive more weight than organizations’ sites with less
gravitas.
Currently, Google News provides thousands of results based on
relevance to the keyword entered.
