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It has been announced that Google have bought the San Francisco based company; Metaweb. The Metaweb database called Freebase is, unlike Google, able to understand the relationship between people, places and things. The database then assists the website in making these connections between those words. The use of Freebase by SEO services could prove very beneficial and has been described as a “tremendous resource” by Jack Menzel; director of product management at Google.

The database currently indexes information on over 12 million subjects, including books, TV and film, celebrities, businesses, countries and more. Metaweb want to encourage other web companies to contribute to this huge catalogue of data.

Google intend to utilise Freebase to generate more relevant and accurate results when users search using complicated questions. Google’s current algorithm cannot cope with complicated questions i.e.  ‘Bands from Manchester who have had a top 10 single.’ Freebase will be able to understand the question resulting in more relevant Google results. This is a positive advancement for the search engine.

Google has always stated that its main objective is to provide its users with the most up to date information relative to the search query enter.

However, they have now announced that they are restricting the number of stories its users can read for free. This news is a direct consequence of the pressure put on the search giant from increasingly concerned media groups.

But what does it mean for the future of online and will it do anything to stop the dominance of Google in the search space?