Latest Major Google Algorithm Update: BERT
Spoiler Alert: This is meant to be a very broad-brush summary designed to explain why the latest major Google algorithm update may be affecting your rankings. According to Google, this does not “directly affect rankings” and you cannot optimize for it. However, we and others in the SEO industry have seen wide fluctuations in rankings. So far, all of our rankings have come back at least once, but we continue to see volatility in search results. In other words, hang on tight!
Bert Defined
“Bert is a natural language processing pre-training approach that can be used on a large body of text. It handles tasks such as entity recognition, part of speech tagging, and question-answering among other natural language processes. Bert helps Google understand natural language text from the Web."
According to Google, this update will affect complicated search queries that depend on context.
What Google SaysAbout Bert:
“These improvements are oriented around improving language understanding, particularly for more natural language/conversational queries, as BERT is able to help Search better understand the nuance and context of words in Searches and better match those queries with helpful results.
Particularly for longer, more conversational queries, or searches whereprepositions like “for” and “to” matter a lot to the meaning, Search will beable to understand the context of the words in your query. You can search in away that feels natural for you.”
What is the BERT Algorithm?
"Google has open-sourced this technology, and others have created variations of BERT.”
The BERT algorithm (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) is a deep learning algorithm related to natural language processing. It helps a machine to understand what words in a sentence mean, but with all the nuances of context. In other words, it is evaluating text for better responses to search for words that sound the same but has different meanings (ie. Too and Two) or words that are the same but have different meanings (ie. Sand (the substance) and Sand (the verb)). This is clearly applicable to improving voice search and therefore, impacts not only core keywords but also long-tailed keywords in SEO.
BERT And On-Page SEO
BERT will not help sites with poorly defined or poorly written content. Again, another sign that in the eyes of Google, “content is King”. Google’s BERT Update improves how Google understands search queries. BERT analyzes search queries, not web pages. On-Page SEO becomes more important in terms of using words in precise ways. Poorly organized and written content may not be helped by the Google BERT update.
BERT Is A Huge Step Forward
Google is showing a major commitment to featuring solid, well-organized content prominently in search results. At this point, there is no evidence to suggest that creating a large amount of long-tailed keyword content will improve website rankings or traffic.
Don’t Try To Optimize For BERTUnless You Can Outsmart A Machine
As soon as BERT was published, manyin the search community began warning about articles claiming how to optimizefor BERT.
Danny Sullivan of Google, who usedto be an SEO expert in the private sector and seems to be a pretty straightshooter is quoted as follows:
“There’snothing to optimize for with BERT, nor anything for anyone to be rethinking.The fundamentals of us seeking to reward great content remain unchanged.”
Conclusion
Facts:
- Most, if not all, of the websites that we workon are experiencing fluctuations, if not major fluctuations, in rankings overthe past couple of weeks. All havereturned to former rankings at least temporarily during this time. All of them have custom content.
- Google will continue to take stepsto ensure that websites that have great rankings also possess greatcontent. This is nothing new in policybut may be raising the bar in standards.
- I have rarely seen a client who didnot gain the rewards of an improved content strategy. Those rewards come in terms of search engineplacement, increased traffic, increased engagement and increasedconversion. There is no practicalreason to try to outsmart an algorithm-provide unique and valuable content toyour users.
Finally, BERT is an extremely complex and advanced piece of machine learning. I would not presume to be able to describe it in anything but the broadest of terms, and that is what I have done here.
Eric Van Cleave is the CEO and Digital Marketing Director for TIV Branding
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TIV Branding is a boutique branding firm in Sonoma County, California. We specialize in building brands by using traditional, social and digital channels in unison. If you would like to discuss a project or find out more about how we do what we do, please email us at info@TIVbranding.com.