Google likes to give their updated names, we previously had FRED, and now we’ve been hit with Google BERT. Now we are able to imagine that a number of you may be thinking the new update is known as after the rather grumpy Seasame Street character, but alas, BERT actually stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.

Yes, that's what it stands for, and that we understand if you think that that it's some random words put together to make an acronym. What does Google BERT mean? Well, the new algorithm change is all based around complex searches that rely upon context.

Here’s the quote directly from Google:

“These improvements are oriented around improving language understanding, particularly for more natural language/conversational queries, as BERT can help Search better understand the nuance and context of words in Searches and better match those queries with helpful results.

Particularly for extended, more conversational queries, or searches where prepositions like “for” and “to” matter lots to the meaning, Search are going to be ready to understand the context of the words in your query. you'll be able to search in a very way that feels natural for you.”

As we ask Google more complex questions each day, the BERT update is intended to deploy the proper results for searches with conversational queries. Previously before BERT, if you sought for “best website designer for my company”, Google would probably return a pursuit for pages optimized for website designer and company. Now with the processing power of BERT, Google will return results with the language from online.

Google BERT and SEO

BERT is great for on-page SEO. Website’s with poorly written content will fall foul with BERT. As BERT is programmed to read a more tongue, sites with shoehorned, overly spammy content won't read right. consider BERT as an actual person, if you walked up to someone on the road and asked “Sandwich Shop Darlington”, they'd probably observe you wish you were crazy and go forth at speed. Change the way you ask, “best place for a sandwich in Darlington”, and you'd possibly get the right response. this is often the same as how BERT will work.

The new update also comes into play when the context of research plays a part in the results displayed. Some words are identical but carry different meanings across different markets. Take “ball” as an example. Are you trying to find a ball or a ball to attend with guests? Context plays a large part in what results are returned, and with the deployment of BERT, search results served will meet your query and separate out the searches that aren’t relevant.

BERT’s Future

You’ve probably read this blog and had the identical thought we had. BERT search sounds how we confer with Google Assitant, Alexa, and Siri. BERT seems like the right start for a worldwide algorithm that may develop over multiple devices. As we speak to look more, rather than typing, BERT will play a large part in getting the correct searches before of the proper person.