What is Google’s BERT update?

• BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.
• In October 2019, Google announced their most important update in five years.
• The latest search algorithm to better understand natural language, BERT is Google’s neural network-based technique for natural language processing (NLP) pre-training.
• According to Google, it will affect context dependent search queries.

What is the purpose of BERT update?

The objective of BERT is to help machines understand what words in a sentence mean and add context to the search query, something that was missing before. BERT will impact how Google understands search queries and will be able to better match those queries with helpful results.

What does Google say about 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 where prepositions like “for” and “to” matter a lot to the meaning, Search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query. You can search in a way that feels natural for you.”

What type of project is BERT?

BERT is an open-source research project and academic paper, as well as a natural language processing NLP framework. Google has produced and then open-sourced it with the aim to improve the whole natural language processing research field.

What language websites are affected by BERT update?

Initially, it is rolling out for English language queries and will expand to other languages in the future. BERT has been pre-trained on many words, as well as on the whole of the English Wikipedia 2,500 million words.

How does BERT affect SEO?

BERT will affect 1 in 10 of all search queries, including organic rankings and featured snippets. This is the biggest change in search since Google released RankBrain. Google BERT is a framework for understanding natural language. It does not judge content but just better understands natural language and its context. The best thing to do is to continue to write naturally and ensure more focused and well organized content.

How Does Bert Affect Local Businesses?

If your website is full of information that will now see the light of day more often due to the BERT update, you’ll see more organic impressions, clickthroughs and backlinks to your content. This will naturally have a positive impact on your overall search profile and ultimately your tracked, local rankings.

Can you optimize Google My Business (GMB) website for BERT?

You can’t optimize your website for the kinds of unpredictable and completely unique phrases that BERT is hoping to return better search results for.

However, you can continue creating great content for human readers, using natural language.

As a business owner, it’s scary knowing it’s possible that your business may appear less or differently in search results because of algorithm changes. Updates like “Bert” make it important for you to have a marketing strategy in place, including a locally-optimized website, keyword-rich content and consistent business listings (citations).

In the rapidly changing digital world, our team at DoLocal is ready to help you stay a step ahead of the competition.