If Twitter were like an old-style McDonald’s, the sign outside would have changed to “1 Billion Queries Served” today. And to keep serving up those queries to humans and machines alike, Twitter is now using a new underlying search technology.

The news was announced in a post on Twitter’s Engineering blog today. Let’s take the technical change first, then get into the fun numbers.

New Search Engine “Under The Hood”

Twitter is now using a new search engine, actually has been using it for the past few weeks, the company said. But by new search engine, it’s not a new “look-and-feel” that’s been unveiled. Instead, this is about what’s under the hood.