Google just announced the awesome update which is BERT Update, calling it the biggest change to Google search in the last 5 years. Google uses BERT models to better understand search queries. Google said this change impacted both search rankings and featured snippets and BERT will be used on 10% of U.S. English searches. This means 90% of searches still return results without BERT’s input.

Of course, Google plans to roll out BERT in a much bigger way after this initial testing phase, but assuming it works like they say it will, this will be a good thing.

What is Google Bert Update?

BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.

Google has adjusted its algorithm to better understand natural language processing (NLP).

At its core, this new update is focused on interpreting the intent of search queries better. Instead of looking at the user’s search query on a word by word basis, BERT allows Google to interpret the entire phrase better to give the searcher more accurate results. Slight modifications or even simple words in a search query can dramatically alter the search intent.

BERT SEO Update will impact content and search:

With this new update, Google is getting better at interpreting what the users are truly looking for when they search. Google laid out one of the best example in their announcement:

As you can see from the before and after picture, it’s clear that the new result is more relevant.

Google also made changes to featured snippets:

For example, if you searched for “parking on a hill with no curb”, Google used to place too much emphasis on the word “curb” and not enough emphasis on the word “no”.

As you can see from the before and after picture, it’s clear that the new result is more relevant.

That’s a big difference and you can see that in the results. The new change this algorithm update brings makes it much more relevant for searchers and it creates a better experience for you and me and everyone else who uses Google.

BERT is all about context:

If you want to understand what BERT is really about, one word summarizes the center of this update: context. And context is very important in everything we do and say. BERT’s technology allows Google to better understand search queries as a whole rather than as a string of words.

People often type long strings of words into Google when searching for something. Prior to BERT, Google’s AI normally interpreted each of these words individually. Now, Google does a better job understanding the words as they relate to each other.

Here’s a search for “2019 brazil traveller to USA need a visa.” The word “to” and its relationship to the other words in the query are particularly important to understanding the meaning. It’s about a Brazilian traveling to the U.S., and not the other way around. Previously, our algorithms wouldn’t understand the importance of this connection, and we returned results about U.S. citizens traveling to Brazil. With BERT, Search is able to grasp this nuance and know that the very common word “to” actually matter a lot here, and we can provide a much more relevant result for this query.

BERT Algorithm: Impact on Voice Search:

Voice Search is undoubtedly the next big thing in the Digital marketing and SEO world and the Internet. Google has been pushing voice assistant focused features over the last few years, and BERT can be considered as the latest one.

The announcement says that the BERT Algorithm Update is the fruit of years of hard work put in by the language research team under its machine learning department. Google says BERT marks a milestone in search as it’s the biggest leap the company has made in its entire history.

With the advent of voice-based searches and personal assistance devices, such as Google Home, becoming part of everyone’s family, there is a significant need for better contextual search results.

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