Quantum computers could help search engines keep up with
Internet’s growth Most people don’t think twice about how
Internet search engines work. You type in a word or phrase, hit
enter and poof — a list of Web pages pops up, organized by
relevance. Behind the scenes, a lot of math goes into figuring
out exactly what qualifies as most relevant Web page for your
search. Google, for example, uses a page ranking algorithm that
is rumored to be the largest numerical calculation carried out
anywhere in the world. With the Web constantly expanding,
researchers at USC have proposed — and demonstrated the
feasibility of —using quantum computers to speed up that
process. “This work is about trying to speed up the way we
search on the Web,” said Daniel Lidar, corresponding author of a
paper on the research that appeared in the journal Physical
Review Letters on June 4. As the Internet continues to grow, the
time and resources needed to run the calculation — which is done
daily — grow with it, Lidar said. Lidar, who hold