The Toronto-based web design company reassures businesses that they have nothing to fear from the update to Google’s search algorithm
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At the end of October, 2019, Google began rolling out BERT, an acronym for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, as the latest update to its search algorithm. With the new update, Google can interpret the intent of a search query by understanding the relationships among the linguistic elements that make it up. BERT is being touted as the biggest and most important update to Google since RankBrain was launched in 2015.
It is expected that BERT will have an impact on approximately one in ten English-language searches. With the growing popularity of voice searches, Google has needed a language processing system capable of interpreting long-tail, complex search queries. When people ask a voice assistant like Alexa or Siri for information, they tend to use longer queries in the form of questions or commands. While text searches are often just a few words in length, voice searches tend to use seven or more words. In order to interpret the intent of voice searches, Google needed to develop an algorithm that could do more than simply match keywords.
BERT is not only adept at understanding the natural language of a voice search, however. In examples posted on Google’s blog, the search strings are complex and lack the predictable syntax of a sentence or question. One of the examples is “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa.” The example was posted to show how BERT interpreted the directional preposition “to” to give better search results. Without BERT, Google suggested a site geared toward Americans traveling to Brazil. With BERT, Google offered a link to the U.S. embassy in Brazil, answering the implied question “Do Brazilians need a visa to travel to the U.S.?”
BERT is intended to complement rather than replace RankBrain, say Google executives. RankBrain is another artificial intelligence system that uses machine learning to interpret the intention of search queries and match queries to results, and it has been the third most significant component of the Google search algorithm up to now. With the advent of BERT, search queries may be handled by either one or both of the systems, and the addition of BERT is predicted to significantly improve search results for both spoken and typed-in queries.
The news of the update has made waves in the world of web design, where digital marketing and design professionals are wondering how BERT will impact search engine optimization (SEO). So far the effects have been small, but business owners are cautioned to pay close attention to their search traffic statistics to identify any landing pages or queries that are not converting as well as they should. Online marketing specialists at Gilmedia predict that SEO best practices, like creating well-written and useful content, will continue to yield the best results.
According to Google, businesses have nothing to fear from the BERT update because the new algorithm is not meant to penalize anyone. In fact, since BERT does a better job of interpreting search queries, chances are it will send higher quality traffic to websites, leading to more conversions. Some businesses had already seen an increase in web traffic just a few days after the update was released.
In addition to advancing natural language processing in English, BERT is also being applied to web searches in other languages. Currently, BERT is being implemented with featured snippets, those boxes that contain a direct answer to a query at the top of search results, in over two dozen countries.
Contact Info:
Name: Leon Gilevich
Email: Send Email
Organization: Gilmedia
Website: https://www.gilmedia.ca/
Source URL: https://marketersmedia.com/gilmedia-responds-to-bert-googles-latest-ai-update/88933931
Source: MarketersMedia
Release ID: 88933931
