How Recent Google Updates Affect You and Your Business
Google is continually updating its algorithms to make it more search friendly to the user. A recent update, BERT, stands to affect 10% of all search queries, making it the biggest change in search since Google released RankBrain almost five years ago. Here’s what you need to know about BERT and how it could affect your business website.
What Is BERT?
In layman’s terms, BERT is like a neural network for your search engine that focuses on natural language processing.
The acronym stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.
Essentially, it is a form of open-source artificial intelligence that allows computers to better understand language. Using BERT in queries will help return more natural results, with context in mind.
How Is Google Using BERT?
In a statement, Google said that BERT helps the search engine better understand nuance of language and the context of words to match the user with more relevant results than ever. In an example to the public, Google said that the search query “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa” would have featured results of a U.S. citizen traveling to Brazil because Google’s algorithm was not sophisticated enough to tease out the meaning of “to” in the sentence, which provides important context. With BERT, Google should be able serve more relevant results – getting a Brazil citizen information about obtaining a visa to travel to the U.S. – based on the query.
How Will BERT Affect My Business?
With any algorithm update, there is some concern that businesses will be penalized and their SEO will suffer. However, it’s important to understand that BERT is not an algorithm that will penalize websites. It is focused on understanding search queries and intent, so it does not affect current web pages per se.
At the same time, BERT also highlights the importance of on-page SEO. Providing answers to user queries can bolster SEO tactics. BERT will also affect features snippets in all languages, so crafting thoughtful content with the user in mind will only boost SEO.
Businesses who create meaningful content for their users needn’t worry too much about the impact of BERT. With BERT understanding reader queries better, creating quality, user-focused content with precise keywords will naturally bolster SEO and help customers find what they need more quickly.
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